What you will be able to do
- Recognise 氵, 扌, 讠 and 亻 on sight and name the field of meaning each one predicts.
- Write each of the four in the correct number of strokes and in the correct order.
- Split a two-part character into its semantic and phonetic halves, as in 请, 妈 and 河.
- State honestly what the hint does not give you: the exact meaning, and the exact sound.
本文中的中文词语都可以激活，查看词典释义。
Four shapes that tell you what a character is about
Most Chinese characters are built from two pieces: one that hints at the meaning and one that hints at the sound. The meaning piece is usually the radical, the component a dictionary files the character under. Four of them sit at the left-hand edge often enough that learning them changes how a page of text looks — a wall of unfamiliar shapes turns into a small set of repeating parts.
the person radical
is rén squeezed onto the left: two strokes, a and then a . Almost every character carrying it is about a human being or something a human does.
- nǐ you, tā he, men (the plural marker), zhù to live, in , zuò to do, xiū to rest.
is the clearest case in the language: a person beside a tree — resting.
the speech radical
is yán speech, compressed to two strokes. It says the character has something to do with words.
- shuō to speak, huà speech, in , qǐng, xiè, rènshi, dú to read aloud, cí word.
In traditional characters the same radical keeps its full form, , with seven strokes: , , , . If you have ever wondered why and look related, this is why.
the water radical
is shuǐ turned into three dots down the left side, written top to bottom, the third one flicking up. It marks liquids, rivers, and anything wet.
- hé river, hǎi sea, xǐ to wash, tāng soup, jiǔ alcohol, yóu to swim, in .
the hand radical
is shǒu hand, compressed to three strokes: a , a , and a rising . It marks actions done with the hands.
- dǎ to hit, zhǎo to look for, lā to pull, tuī to push, tí to lift, huàn to change.
How the two halves work together
Take qǐng. The says it belongs to the field of speech. The qīng says roughly how it sounds. Neither half is exact — is qīng and the character is qǐng — but between them they narrow an unknown character to a guess worth making.
- mā: for the sense, mǎ for the sound.
- hé: for the sense, kě for the sound.
- fàn: (food) for the sense, fǎn for the sound.
What the hint does not give you
Two honest limits, and a learner who knows them will trust the system in the right measure.
First, the semantic hint gives you a field, not a definition. méi carries and today mostly means not have. carries and turns up in , the Chinese language. The radical tells you which drawer the character was filed in a long time ago; it does not tell you what the word means now.
Second, the sound has drifted over two thousand years. A phonetic component gives you a neighbourhood, not an address: qīng sits inside qǐng and qīng and qíng, and the tones do not agree.
Used with that expectation, the two halves are worth an enormous amount. They let you look a character up on paper, guess at a word you have never met, and — most valuable of all — stop storing characters as pictures and start storing them as two pieces you already know.
How to work through it
Two pieces, not one pictureread
Read the four sections, then look at any page of Chinese and count how many characters have one of the four shapes on their left edge. The number is usually a surprise, and it is the argument for this lesson.
From 人 to 亻writing
Write 人 five times, then 你 five times, and watch what the component gives up when it moves left: the 捺 that fell to the right becomes a straight 竖, because there is no room for it any more. Every left-hand radical does something like this.
Two strokes of speechwriting
Write 请 and 谢, finishing the 讠 completely before starting the right-hand side. Then say aloud which half carries the meaning and which carries the sound: 讠 with 青 qīng in 请, 讠 with 射 shè in 谢.
Water, folded into three dotswriting
Write 水 first so that you can see where 氵 comes from, then write 汉. The three dots go top to bottom and the third one rises — it is a 提, not a fourth dot. Add 河 and 洗 once each if you want the shape to settle.
Words you already know, seen twicevocabulary
Six words you have met before. Look at them again as assemblies rather than as shapes: 讠 in five of the six, 氵 hiding inside 汉语. Recognising the part is what turns memorising into reading.
Guess before you look it upread
Take five characters you have never seen. For each one, name the radical, say what field it puts the character in, guess the sound from the other half, and only then look it up. Keep score. Two out of five is a good result, and it is two more than guessing at a picture.