joni

averjm
June 18, 2011, 05:39 PM posted in I Have a Question

I started learning the radical from the yellowbridge site as my introduction to writing characters. The names assigned to each radical I believed to be chinese words but a friend has said they are not. Can anyone explain the significance of the names?  Thank you.

joni

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jennyzhu
June 19, 2011, 03:34 AM

I looked at yellowbridge but couldn't find the names of theradicals. Can you give me an example? In any case, there are terminologies or names for radicals. For example, the radical in 你 is called 单人旁/dānrénpáng, literally meaning single person radical. And the radical in 得 is called 双人旁/shuāngrénpáng, or double person radical. BTW, I've forwarded your question about Skritter to our support team. They will get back to you.

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averjm

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=radicals&cdqraddm=1

this list may be clearer Jenny

a friend looked at it and pointed out gun3, zhu3, tou4 - showing with an english name of line, dot and lid - - were not chinese words.

How do chinese people use radicals? like an alphabet ? -to look up words in a dictionary? anything else?

thank you

Joni