"When a woman sticks to her child, it is good" Work your own way to remember each of themĮach of us has his personal idea, history, conviction or preference when it comes to mnemonics to remember things.įor instance, in our previous exemple for 好 hǎo, we could think of it this way: 子 zi (child), is a component with a semantic function (because to express that something is good, we associate a mother and a child), but there is no phonetics function of the radical to help for the pronunciation.女 nǚ (woman), is the semantic radical, and also the key.好 hǎo, which means good, is made of 2 radicals: 巴 bā (to wish), is the phonetics radical.
![how to learn excel online in simplified chinese how to learn excel online in simplified chinese](https://www.archchinese.com/bingo_card_maker.png)
父 fù (father), is the semantic radical, and also the key.爸 bà, which means dad, is made of 2 radicals: However, with the increase of the use of digital dictionaries on smartphone, in which you can draw the character, knowing keys become less critical. In many cases, the radical on the left or on the top of a character is the key. phonetics, giving the sound to the character, or something very close to it.Įvery character has one and only one radical with the function of "key", which allows to find a character into a dictionary.semantic, providing part or whole of the meaning.Radicals can have one of the following functions, or both: Why?īecause when you know the radicals, you can remember more easily how they combine with each other to form more complex characters. Knowing 214 radicals will ease your process of learning Chinese. 214 radicals to build most characters What is Chinese made of?Ĭhinese is made of words, which are made of characters, themselves made of one or more radicals among 214.