The Building Blocks of Chinese Character (Chinese Radicals 101)

In this video, Fiona Tian gives a quick introduction to how Chinese characters are made up of building blocks of components and so-called Chinese radicals.
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[@boredgrass]

Hey Fiona! I am soo delighted to have found your here! I was really saddened when I couldn't find you anymore in 101 podcast! I loved your videos!

[@steve7309]

Thank you Fiona ! You should do more video, you're such an amazing teacher! 謝謝你!

[@salut730]

True

[@jetjehmeen3913]

Yeah I agree

[@AlexThomson-EasternApproaches]

Fantastic to see Fiona back.

[@LeiaLouise]

I’m three years in, and I’m just now learning the list of radicals 😂

[@learnchinesewithlinda7874]

Great video! Thanks for this! I will share it with my students (and, yes I also remember the good old days of flipping through the dictionary struggling to find the word, lol)

[@joelthomastr]

When I look back on my experiences as a student of Chinese, I realize that nothing contributes more to character building than the influence of radicals

[@MediumDSpeaks]

Oh I actually loved the skritter act last time I was trying t learn Mandarin! So happy you have videos, maybe I'll come back to it if they're good!

[@ashlynl4796]

Thanks so much Fiona!! Learnt alot in this video!

[@liliankimani9524]

Great explanation. Let me set off to learn more about radicals. Thank you very 💓 much

[@mikedaniels3009]

Thanks, Fiona. May everyone choose to take your video to heart. Compare them who invest the time in building a solid foundation of radicals to those who build aquaeducts and now enjoy tap water and the rest to those who keep fetching their daily water supply with buckets. Beginners may not realise the immense economy of time which the sound knowledge of radicals brings. Great illustrations by the way : 齉，爨 A solid character comes from a loving & radical upbringing .

[@curtpiazza1688]

Great explanation!

[@laoziagainstmazinger7474]

Chinese is magic!

[@dailysuccessmachine]

Oh so happy you're doing videos again Fiona. Didn't know you moved from ChinesePod to Skritter 💪

[@SkritterHQ]

She left ChinesePod around 5 years ago. She recently rejoined Skritter full time though!! 🙌

[@ariamaze9081]

When I started learning mandarin I didnt focus on radical and after a month neither practice the hand writing, now that Im starting knowing more.the radicals I.can.remember better the characters and watch series.or.movies without pausing That.much the.videos, also I can.translate sentences more.faster 😅 in the keyboard...

[@MalleshGujjala]

You are amazing

[@charlstkt]

很酷！😃

[@reonevez9156]

Hello are the characters in skritter app traditional or simplified. Thanks

[@SkritterHQ]

Yes. We support both. You can study either, or even both at the same time!

[@user-ju2xf3mu7n]

Thank you

[@santhoshrider7348]

அதானே! தமிழன் இல்லாத இடமுண்டா??! 😂

[@takakonobe]

Fiona is the GOAT

[@user-pq5nn7gn9c]

好久不见！Fiona!

[@eb6132]

Fionaaaaaaa! Omggg

[@PeterWisner]

好久好久不见 Fiona！ 最近还好吗？😃

[@user-uu5xf5xc2b]

maybe it would be better to say a broad categorization attempt rather than building blocks. anyways thank you for your videos!

[@lovely-shrubbery8578]

She still exists!

[@KeyboredCoward]

Fiona is back, mature and more beautiful in appearance. Yes I am learning Hanzi, nice to see you again Fiona :)

[@Seanid54]

0:39 helped me on my exam lol

[@PickUpVietnamese]

Wow. Chinese radicals. 🥳 Nice. Is it weird that I still prefer pinyin😂

[@malakhaj2391]

You like it because it's familiar. I used to like to write japanese in romaji, but now that I can read my hiragana somewhat fast, I actually like hiragana. I bet you'd love chinese radicals once you get used to them

[@PickUpVietnamese]

@@malakhaj2391 yeah. I think so too. People love what's easy and familiar. Or at least I do. 😂

[@foodparadise5792]

2:38 This is actually radical of boat not walk. Any character has to do with traveling, moving involves this. Ancient Chinese people replying on boat to travel long distance along the Yellow river and the Yangtze. Radical for walk can be 足 或者 走.

[@probalruram8409]

你 好

[@erikseavey9445]

I got to admit. I don't find it practical. However I don't like not being able to understand people so... here I learn.

[@ultramanzinfinityboonkang3555]

hi

[@deadtheories4170]

I know all of them by memory but I still don't get why they mean what they are and what to replace them with? 😕 That's how learned english, math,and biology. Just memorize everything and replace each thing depending on the situation but it's hard to apply this to Chinese 😕 and I don't like asking for help since people over explain things 😐

[@Leo-io4bq]

As a math student I am hurt to hear that is the way you learn math

[@lafinafinvenkisto]

The girl is cool

[@zulkiflijamil4033]

意。臆。癔。嬑。 so all these characters have one pronunciation yi?

[@romainrouiller4889]

Did chinesePod bought skritter or what !?

[@SkritterHQ]

No. Skritter has been around since 2008 and was one of the first Chinese learning apps on the App Store. The production team at Cpod quit in 2017 and Gwilym and Fiona and Iona joined the Skritter team. Constance went back to school to finish her pHD but remains close to them. Fiona is now working in another field but comes back for special videos and helps Gwilym and Iona.

[@avivastudios2311]

It's so cool that chinese people came up with a symbol for everything. but it just makes me not want to learn the language. Cool vid tho. I like how the water strokes look like drops of water and the fire one looks like a campfire. Sort of.

[@SkritterHQ]

If you watch the character course that we made on Skritter, you’ll realise that there aren’t actually that many pictures (pictographs) for individual things, and 80% of characters are just a combination of sounds and meanings to make new words. Once you know this, it’s not quite so daunting. There is a trailer for the character course on our channel, and you can try the app for free to watch all the rest.

[@samleesamlee9595]

If you want to waste your time, here She is....😅

[@hockng5610]

The problem of classifying a character by sound is a mistake as it is dialect dependant. If you do not know how a character is pronounced, you are screwed when trying to look it up. Now the stroke system is also broken, the modern Chinese dictionary a la Beijing dialect is broken as well. For example, if you see an unrecognized character, there is no way you can find out what it means or how it is pronouned. You do not have that problem most of the time with traditional Chinese characters as you do lookups radicals and stroke count there.

[@hockng5610]

But the system of simplified characters has broken the radical system. No longer are dictionaries organized by radicals. Traditional Chinese characters are organized by radicals and by a table of exceptions. Traditional Chinese dictionaries are orgainzed by a radical and the number of strokes on the non-radicals. Complicated but working. The simplied Chinese characters are organized by sounds of the characters according to the Beijing dialect in a hash table manner. Some characters have multiple readings and if not careful, you might neglect all the possible readings of a particular characters. The simplification process actually rid of the radicals for simplification purposes. So it is not true any longer that by looking at the radical you can guess what the meaning of a character. Before 1970, I did not learn Mandarin and only spoke Cantonese. I was able to use the traditional Chinese dictionary. If I did not learn Mandarin on my own, I would not be able to use the Xinhua dictionary, for instance. The simplified system was designed and deployed in haste, 1956 deployment. They have gone through several versions before having arrived at the current one. It was supposed to be a transition language until romanization. Romanization failed so we are stuck with the current one. I learned Chinese thru the traditional characters and do not consider it difficult. I can data entry simplified Chinese characters but cannot write it correctly on occasions. It is hard to get used to for me. Moreover, with a few adjustments, I read simplify Chinese transparently. I write traditional Chinese proficiently manually enven though I have not even finish third grade in HK. In practice, it was self-taught bith in Cantonese and Mandarin. It is feasible if you can use a traditional Chinese dictionary. Manually traditional Chinese characters are hard to write manually; other than that, reading, data entry with computers are pretty much the same.

[@LeiaLouise]

1956, how old are you? 🤯

[@Obelisk57]

I have only heard of Islamic radicals, never Chinese radicals.

[@ahjit7283]

To recognize Chinese character, is easy way. Eg Using ㄅ create new word 二+ㄅ变亏。乛+ㄣ+ - 变马。一+一+勹ㄅ变与。写☞ㄣ +写☞冖+一 +一 变写。乌☞ㄣ+勺 变乌 。other 岛，乌，鸡，ㄅ+コ≌弓.other 第粥佛沸. Remember draw on h/p screen