Radical refers to which part of Chinese characters represents its meaning or phonology. Chinese characters have 2 14 radicals, which is one of the traditional Chinese character classification methods.
The radical is the first stroke or glyph of Chinese characters. For a single character, the radical is the first picture, just like the radical of "Yonghe Sunlight" is "He"; For combined Chinese characters, radicals are ideographic components for classification, that is, "side shapes". For example, the radical of "Clearly Describe the Shape of Ginger" is "Japanese Meaning".
Radicals are divided into two categories: ideographic and non-ideographic. There are only one or two pictures that don't express meaning, for example, the radicals that express meaning are pictographs, which are used to express things.
Radical is a list of symbols generated by analyzing the structure and meaning of glyphs. Radical was initiated by Xu Shen, a famous Confucian scholar and philologist in the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Radicals first appeared in Shuo Wen Jie Zi compiled by Xu Shen. Chinese characters are arranged on the basis of the six methods of Chinese characters, and only characters with the same initial stroke or glyph are arranged on the same radical. After Shuowen Jiezi, Linzi and Leipian all followed this style.
Shuo Wen Jie Zi was written in A.D. 100. Since then, it has become a common habit to arrange and check Chinese characters with radicals. Shuo Wen Jie Zi divides the Chinese characters of Xiao Zhuan into 540 radicals, and explains the word-formation principles of these Chinese characters into six books: pictographic, referential, knowing, pictophonetic, transliteration and borrowing.
It is difficult for ordinary people to remember more than 500 radicals and their order when searching Chinese characters by radical arrangement method, so radical index method also has the disadvantage of difficult retrieval.
With the rise of phonology, after the Six Dynasties, word books appeared in the form of rhyme. This method is divided into four tones, and homophones are further divided into several subcategories. Homonyms in each rhyme are grouped together and arranged in the order of initials. This arrangement is very convenient for people familiar with phonology to find.
Therefore, this classification method has been popular for a period of time, and famous rhyme books such as Qieyun, Tangyun, Guang Yun and Jiyun have appeared successively. In addition, some people published Shuo Wen Jie Zi, which was arranged in rhyme order in the Song Dynasty. This classification helps to fill in poems and facilitate word search.