{"id":2839,"date":"2012-08-20T23:01:15","date_gmt":"2012-08-20T21:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/?p=2839"},"modified":"2025-02-15T00:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T23:18:07","slug":"kickstart-your-character-learning-with-the-100-most-common-radicals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/kickstart-your-character-learning-with-the-100-most-common-radicals\/","title":{"rendered":"Kickstart your Chinese character learning with the 100 most common radicals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

I’ve taught many introduction courses in Chinese. Each time, I’ve felt the lack of a beginner-friendly list of the most common Chinese radicals. I tell students that learning character components<\/a> is essential, and that it’s a long-term investment that will pay off several times over the course of their Chinese studies. I then show them some of the most common Chinese radicals.<\/p>\n

But then what?<\/p>\n

Beginners often find it hard to determine which components are common and which aren’t, and learning all of them at once is not a good idea. Sure, you can learn any component you see more than twice, but I think we can do better!<\/p>\n

Filling a gap: The most common Chinese radicals<\/h3>\n

Lists of common Chinese radicals are typically based on data from a very large number of characters. If you base such a list on the 50,000 characters in the Kangxi dictionary<\/a>, you will end up believing that \u9e1f\/\u9ce5, “bird”, is one of the most common Chinese radicals (the first character is simplified Chinese, the second is traditional Chinese; learn more here<\/a> if you’re not sure what this means).<\/p>\n

There’s only one problem:<\/strong> \u9e1f\/\u9ce5 is not even close to being the most important Chinese radical for beginners to learn.<\/p>\n

If you only take the most commonly used 2,000 characters into account, \u9e1f only occurs nine times. That means it doesn’t even make the top 100!<\/p>\n

In other words, while there are many characters that use this radical, most of these characters are not within the most commonly used 2,000 and thus not relevant for beginners or even intermediate learners. In fact, most of the characters \u9e1f appears in are bird names, which should be low on any beginner’s priority list.<\/p>\n

The most common Chinese radicals among the most common characters<\/h3>\n

The list I have compiled here is based on the frequency of the radicals among the 2,000 most commonly used characters. This means that all these radicals are essential. Almost all occur in at least ten characters, most of them in more than that.<\/p>\n

As a beginner, you can learn all the radicals on this list without fearing that you’re learning things you don’t actually need. It’s meant to be a solid foundation on which to build.<\/p>\n

Download a list of the 100 most common Chinese radicals, completely free!<\/h3>\n

The list I have compiled is presented at the very end of this article (click here to skip to it<\/a>). However, you probably want to download the list or do something else with it, so here are a few options:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • The 100 most common Chinese radicals as a PDF (suitable for printing).<\/strong><\/a> There are two PDF versions available, so if you don’t like that one (created by Markus Ackermann), you can try this version<\/a>, made by Peter Lee. Thanks for helping me create the printable PDFs, guys!<\/li>\n
  • The 100 most common Chinese radicals in .txt format<\/a><\/strong> (for importing into other programs or for easy editing or viewing). If the Chinese characters are not displayed properly, try this file instead<\/a>\u00a0(the first is UTF-16, the other UTF-8).<\/li>\n
  • The 100 most common radicals in .anki format<\/a><\/strong> (this is the old Anki format, if you’re using a new version of Anki, you can just use this link<\/a>, if you want better formatting of the cards, please refer to this text file<\/a>, created by Gregory<\/a>).<\/li>\n
  • The 100 most common radicals as a printable poster<\/a> –\u00a0<\/strong>This is a printable poster created by a reader who prefers to be anonymous. The intended size is A1, so printing it on a normal printer won’t work.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    What information does the 100 most common Chinese radical list contain?<\/h3>\n

    These are the columns used in the list:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Simplified – <\/strong>The full form of the radical in simplified Chinese.<\/li>\n
    2. Traditional <\/strong>– The full form of the radical in traditional Chinese.<\/li>\n
    3. Variants <\/strong>– Common variants of the same character. While these may appear very different to a beginner, they are variants of the same character.<\/li>\n
    4. Meaning – <\/strong>The basic meaning of the radical in English.<\/li>\n
    5. Pronunciation<\/strong> – How to pronounce the radical in Pinyin. Pronunciations in brackets can be ignored! It means that these characters are mostly used for their meaning and seldom used on their own. Even native speakers might not know the pronunciation of these and will use the colloquial name instead (the last column).<\/li>\n
    6. Examples<\/strong> – Five examples chosen from the 2,000 most common (simplified) characters to show you the component in context. Please note that it might not be the radical in all these examples, but also that this is irrelevant from a learner perspective. See the discussion below radicals and character component for a longer explanation.<\/li>\n
    7. Comment <\/strong>– Things worth noting about this radical, often highlighting similarities and differences with other radicals.<\/li>\n
    8. Colloquial name <\/strong>– The name Chinese people use to refer to the radical. Beginners can ignore this, but learning the most common ones is necessary if you need to talk about Chinese characters in Chinese<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Kickstart your character learning with the 100 most common Chinese radicals<\/h3>\n

      As a beginner, you can use the list to boost your understanding of Chinese characters. Learning these 100 fairly simple characters will enable you to recognise parts of almost any character you will encounter. Of course, you won’t recognise all parts of every character, but it is a good start!<\/p>\n

      \"\"<\/a>If you want a good tool to learn characters in general, I suggest using Skritter<\/a>. It’s the only tool that gives you instructive feedback and requires you to write correct characters. It also uses spaced repetition, making learning characters much more efficient. If you want to study this radical list on Skritter, you can find it by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

      You can study this list in Skritter without even creating an account. If you do create an account, though, please use this link so you can get a hefty discount<\/a> if you choose to subscribe. You have to sign up on the website to get the discount, but you can then use that account to study on iOS or Android.<\/p>\n

      Kickstart your understanding of Chinese characters
      \n<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      \"\"<\/a>Chinese is a wonderful language to learn, partly because it can be hacked so efficiently!<\/p>\n

      Learning Chinese characters by pure rote takes huge amounts of time, but by learning basic components (such as those in this list), you can make learning characters both meaningful and fun.<\/p>\n

      Instead of simply writing a character over and over, take a close look at the parts and find creative ways of linking them together.<\/p>\n

      I have written more about how to learn Chinese characters:<\/p>\n

        \n
      • How to learn Chinese characters as a beginner<\/a><\/li>\n
      • My best advice on how to learn Chinese characters<\/a><\/li>\n
      • Is it necessary to learn to write Chinese characters by hand?<\/a><\/li>\n
      • Is it necessary to learn the stroke order of Chinese characters?<\/a><\/li>\n
      • A minimum-effort approach to writing Chinese characters by hand<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        Most common Chinese radicals? Character components? Functional components?<\/h3>\n

        This list isn’t perfect. In essence, there are two things that would make it even more useful. First, even though this list is weighted according to character frequency, it would be better to not just count occurrences, but to also weigh these. Thus, the \u4ebb in \u4ed6, “he”, should count for more than the \u4ebb in \u4f2a\/\u50de, “false”, which is obviously much less common.<\/p>\n

        Second, radicals aren’t necessarily the most important building blocks. A radical is really just the part of a character under which that character is sorted in dictionaries. This means that there are other character components that are common, but which aren’t radicals. Furthermore, since each character has one and only one radical, many of them occur more often as semantic components in characters where they aren’t the radical.<\/p>\n

        There are also many other components that normally carry information about how a character is pronounced. In \u5988\/\u5abd, the radical is \u5973, “woman”, which is clearly related to the meaning of the character. The other part \u9a6c, means “horse”, and is as clearly\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>related to the meaning of the character. It’s pronounced the same way, though, but with a different tone. If you want a more thorough explanation of how characters work, I’ve written a series of articles about that, starting here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

        The building blocks of Chinese, part 1: Chinese characters and words in a nutshell<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n