Thursday, February 16, 2017

The Chinese Character Decomposition: The Technological Process

The Chinese character decomposition is very understandable in its nature and serves for the purpose ‘make simple from complicated’.

If we take the Chinese character mén ‘gate’, consisting of 3 strokes, everyone can easily break it down to simple radicals:

zhǔ dot,
gǔn line,
yǐ second,

What if we have to decompose a more complicated character, for example  nàng ‘snuffle, twang, speak through one's nose’, consisting of 36 strokes?

Nothing difficult. We keep again the main principle of the Chinese character decomposition process ‘make simple from complicated’!

A quick review of the character  nàng ‘snuffle, twang, speak through one's nose’ shows that it consists of a radical and a character:

1. Radical -  bí ‘nose’ - 14 strokes
2. Character -  náng ‘bag, pocket’ - 22 strokes

We have to take into consideration that the Chinese radical  bí ‘nose’ includes one rare component -  bì ‘give, allow’.

The Chinese character  náng bag, pocket’ also includes one rare component -  xuān ‘sue, argue’.

Having done such structural analysis of the Chinese character  nàng ‘snuffle, twang, speak through one's nose’, the rest we have to do is to decompose each component into simple Chinese radicals and components. I repeat not into strokes but into the Chinese radicals and components.

Thus, the overall decomposition of the Chinese character  nàng ‘snuffle, twang, speak through one's nose’ looks like the following:

 nàng ‘snuffle, twang, speak through one's nose’,

 bí nose,
zì self,
丿 piě slash,
mù  eye,
jiōng down box,
sān three,
yī one,
èr two,

 bì give, allow,
 tián field,
wéi enclosure,
jiōng down box,
shí ten,
yī one,
gǔn line,
yī one,

 yóu lame,
yī one,
ér boy,
丿 piě slash,
yǐ second,

 náng bag, pocket,

yī one,
 zhōng centre,
kǒu mouth,
jiōng down box,
yī one,
gǔn line,

mì cover,
 xuān sue, argue,
kǒu mouth,
jiōng down box,
yī one,
kǒu mouth,
jiōng down box,
yī one,

 jǐng well,
yī one,
gǒng two hands,
yī one,
丿 piě slash,
gǔn line,

yī clothing (reduced radical without zhǔ ‘dot’),
tóu lid,
zhǔ dot,
yī one,
fāng right open box,
yī one,
丿 piě slash,


A lot of components, isn’t it? Now we understand all the components. And writing of the Chinese character    nàng ‘snuffle, twang, speak through one's nose’ is not a problem for us any more: we just need to remember the sequence of the components!

The Chinese character decomposition saves a huge amount of time learning how to write a Chinese character!


No comments:

Post a Comment