Chinese Radicals: The Mandarin Learner’s Guide to All 214 Components

Radicals are small components of Chinese characters that make it easier to categorize them and look them up.

Since there’s no alphabet for Mandarin, radicals and character components help you mentally break down a character and make it easier to remember.

We’ll introduce you to all 214 Chinese radicals with usage examples, and then show you how they can aid you in your understanding of Mandarin writing.

Contents

• Complete List of Chinese Radicals
• The Difference Between Radicals and Character Components
• • Radicals
  • Semantic components
  • Phonetic components
• How to Use Radicals (and Character Components) to Learn Chinese
• • Learn about the historical origins
  • Create your own memorable stories
  • Understand the influence of pop culture

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Complete List of Chinese Radicals

In Mandarin Chinese writing, radicals are components of characters that index them so you can look them up in dictionaries.

Every character in Chinese has one radical, usually on the left or top of the character.

The chart below contains the complete list of Chinese radicals.

Please note: Most radical charts use example characters to help you look up words in a dictionary, but the examples in this chart are meant to help you see how radicals and character components appear in different forms within a character.

Table legend:

• (V) – Variant
• (T) – Traditional
• * – Only used in traditional characters

Unmarked forms are the standard simplified Chinese version.

The Difference Between Radicals and Character Components

Chinese character components can be broken up into three categories: radicals, semantic components and phonetic components.

Some people will refer to all three categories as “radicals.” Or, specifically as “key radicals,” “semantic radicals” and “phonetic radicals.” 

That’s because “radical” is used by some to describe the various components of a character, as in “this character has three radicals.”

This isn’t the way we’re using the term “radical” here, but just know that you may see the term being used in more than one way.

Radicals

部首 (bù shǒu) — Radicals are for looking up a word in a dictionary, just like the first letter of a word in English. Every one of the 85,000+ characters technically has one (and only one) radical.

Although learning to use radicals for this purpose can be helpful, most online dictionaries and dictionary apps these days only need pinyin or a drawing of the character.

Semantic components

Semantic components relate to the meaning of the character.

For example, the character 爸 (bà) — father is a vertical character, written top to bottom. The top component 父 (fù) is the semantic component, which means “father.”

Phonetic components

Phonetic components give you an idea of how to pronounce the character.

Reusing the character 爸 as our example, the bottom component 巴 (bā) clues you in to the pronunciation.

How to Use Radicals (and Character Components) to Learn Chinese

Learn about the historical origins

The Chinese writing system dates back more than 3,000 years, so many characters have evolved in form and/or meaning.

For example:

• The character 日 (rì) — sun was originally a circle with a dot in the middle, which looks a lot more like the sun.
• The character 家 (jiā) — home is made up of 宀 (mián) — roof and 豕 (shǐ) — swine. In ancient China, pigs were kept indoors. If a house had a pig, it meant people lived there, so that house was someone’s home.

Create your own memorable stories

For example:

• 我 (wǒ) means “I; me” and is composed of 手 (shǒu), meaning “hand” and 戈 (gē), meaning “spear.”
• The second stroke of “hand” and the first stroke of “spear” combine when writing the character 我.
• So your story could be, “I have a spear going through my hand.”

This combines the meaning of the character (I), the two character components (spear and hand) and a clue about how to draw the character (through) all in one sentence.

Understand the influence of pop culture

The internet has had a large effect on how we use language, and Chinese is no exception.

For instance:

• 赞 (zàn) — to praise is the Chinese word for a social media “like,” such as you might see on WeChat.
• 汗 (hàn) — to perspire is a slang word for being speechless because of embarrassment or exasperation.
• 大神 (dà shén) — deity; god is a slang term for someone who’s an expert in something.
• If you call someone 面 (miàn) — noodle, it means they have no backbone.

It takes a lot of work to master Mandarin. But learning the radicals is a great way to create a “shortcut” for yourself.

With a good understanding of Chinese radicals and character components (and the occasional dash of creativity), you’ll be on your way to reading and writing Chinese like a pro.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)