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.
