Keep Complicated Things Simple!

There are the Chinese characters and the Chinese radicals in the Chinese language. A set of radicals form a Chinese character.

Quite often a radical itself can be a Chinese character as well.

The Chinese characters can be decomposed (or broken down, split) into radicals for the sake of making the Chinese characters learning process simple and understandable.

That is why Chinese character decomposition is a very effective tool for teaching, learning and memorizing the Chinese characters.

Please see below how Chinese character decomposition makes learning simple, indeed.

The Chinese characters 口 kǒu ‘mouth’ and 日 rì ‘sun’ both include the radical 冂 jiōng ‘down box’.  

In addition, the Chinese character 口 kǒu ‘mouth’ also includes the radical 一 yī ‘one’. The Chinese character 日 rì ‘sun’ also includes the radical 二 èr ‘two’.

So, the overall decomposition of the both Chinese characters looks like following:

口 kǒu ‘mouth’

冂 jiōng ‘down box’

一 yī ‘one’

日 rì ‘sun’

冂 jiōng ‘down box’

二 èr ‘two’

Simple, isn’t it? Now we understand that any Chinese character can be decomposed into the Chinese radicals.

You can find more information about the Chinese character decomposition in all Polina Shinkina’s textbooks and in “The Chinese Character Decomposition Guidance” on http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/polina985 and in http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/the-chinese-character-decomposition-guidance/18847104