i heard about radicals a few times can someone tell me what are radicals and will it help
7 answers from our tutors
Best answer
Radicals refer to the components of Chinese characters, which are similar functionally to the prefixes in English. For example, the radical “木” means wood, so words like 树, 林, 柏 etc. are usually related to wood. You can sometimes predict the meaning of a word from the radical.
Radicals are components of Chinese characters. They can form many different characters. Just like root affixes in English, they can derive many different words. They are used when looking up words in a dictionary.
- Mia ChenChinese teaching and homework guidance
Understanding the radicals can sometimes help you understand the meaning of a word, there are tens of millions of Chinese words, radicals can help you understand this kind of word, like a affix , equivalent to a shortcut to understanding Chinese characters.
We call radical "偏旁部首" in Chinese. There are almost 150 common used Chinese radicals. And the radicals are composed by the basic Chinese strokes “笔划”.If you know more radicals, you will find it is a great help in your Chinese reading and writing.
A raridal is a structural of a Chinese character, usually located on the left、rigt、above or below the Chinese character, used to represent the meaning category or voice information of the Chinese character. For example, in Chinese "女"(nǚ zì páng）indicating the meaning related"female”，“妈（mā）means mom、姐（jiě）means elder sister、妹（mèi）younger sister” all three words have a “女”字旁，they all mean about "female". Radicals can help us learn the pronunciation and the meaning of Chinese character better.
- Lee ChenBachelor of Business Administration/Film production/part-time tutoring.
Generally speaking, explaining the Chinese meaning of a word is quite complex because English words cannot correspond one-to-one with Chinese words. In the absence of further information, I believe that "radicals" can be understood as "激进派" in Chinese, referring to people who hold sharp views on something. For example, when it comes to war, 激进派 refer to those who are more actively supporting it, and when it comes to vegetarianism, 激进派 refer to those who demand that everyone not to eat meat. In the Chinese context, radicalism is usually not a positive term.
This is usually used do describe people who are proactive in doing things.
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