One more quick question for those who can read chinese

[glen]

Sometimes I see a chart with the character in it broken down into its basic symbols.
Above the character it says Rad/Str
STR must mean the number of strokes
So, what does Rad mean?

 

[zimu]

Originally posted by: glen
Sometimes I see a chart with the character in it broken down into its basic symbols.
Above the character it says Rad/Str
STR must mean the number of strokes
So, what does Rad mean?

Did you just IM me?! do you have a screenname with this harry potter buddy icon?

PM me!

 

[glen]

No Cinese readers on line today?

 

[marquee]

never seen what you're describing, can you link a pic?

 

[dighn]

radical

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character#Radicals

 

[glen]

Originally posted by: marquee
never seen what you're describing, can you link a pic?

Sure:


http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict
Then in the space where it says, "Search english definition" type in "break Wind" or for that matter any English word.
A chart will come up. and one of the colum heads is "rad/Str"

 

[glen]

Ok, now I know "rad" means radical...what the heck is that? Now strokes is obviously the number of strokes it take to write the character, but what is the radical?

 

[dighn]

Originally posted by: glen
Ok, now I know "rad" means radical...what the heck is that? Now strokes is obviously the number of strokes it take to write the character, but what is the radical?

like that page says, more complex chinese characters usually have a component that somewhat logically groups it with other characters. eg most of the metals in chinese have the radical "gold" associated with it

 

[marquee]

Originally posted by: glen

Originally posted by: marquee
never seen what you're describing, can you link a pic?

Sure:


http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict
Then in the space where it says, "Search english definition" type in "break Wind" or for that matter any English word.
A chart will come up. and one of the colum heads is "rad/Str"

what dighn linked...
helps organize characters into fundamental components.. by looking at a character, you can usually tell what radical its part of. when you look it up in the dictionary, the first couple pages will have a list of radicals (organized by stroke count again) telling you what page characters with that radical start on.

 

[glen]

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict
Then in the space where it says, "Search english definition" type in "fart"
The character seems ot be maade of 2 symbols
The first looks a bit like a capital "P" - By it self, the "P" means:
corpse; to impersonate the dead; to preside

The second looks basically like 2 upside down lowercase "ff"s
But what do they mean bythem selves?

 

[marquee]

Originally posted by: glen
http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict
Then in the space where it says, "Search english definition" type in "fart"
The character seems ot be maade of 2 symbols
The first looks a bit like a capital "P" - By it self, the "P" means:
corpse; to impersonate the dead; to preside

The second looks basically like 2 upside down lowercase "ff"s
But what do they mean bythem selves?

Chinese characters have some sort of pattern to them. the 'parts' that make up the character maybe be included for several reasons. The radical part has usually something to do with the meaning. the "P", meaning corpse, could be included cuz, well... farts stink. Another reason a part might be included is for phonetic reasons. The upside down "ff" is the chinese character for competition (look up competition and you'll see), but phonetically it is pronouced "bi". Now obviously fart and competition have nothing to do with each other, but phonetically, "bi" and "pi" are pretty similar.