Tag: all chinese characters

Shuowen jiezi 说文解字Explaining Simple and Analyzing Compound Characters

The Shuowen jiezi 说文解字 "Explaining simple and analyzing compound characters", short Shuowen 说文, is the oldest and one of the most important character dictionaries of ancient China. It was compiled by the Later Han period 后汉 (25-220 CE) scholar Xu Shen 许慎. The book was finished in 100 CE but was only submitted to the court in 121 by the author's son, Xu Chong 许冲. The characters are arranged in 540 so-called radicals (bushou 部首) in 14 chapters, and one chapter including a list of the radicals and Xu Shen’s own postface (xu 叙).

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Lesson 3 The radicals

All chinese characters contain a particular component called "radical" or "side". this is the basic part of chinese character,These elements were once characters themselves, but some are no longer recognizable as such. Learning the radicals helps to categorize and memorize characters; if you know each radical,it’s easy for you write chinese character in the future. the presence of a certain radical can even suggest the meaning of the whole character, which often relates to the original form of the radical. On the other hand, the non-radical component of the character often suggests its pronounciation, or viceversa.

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