Chinese characters are built using specific components, almost like Lego blocks.

If you know the individual blocks, you can understand the whole structure.

These blocks are called Chinese radicals.

So, what’s a radical?

Here’s the simple definition:

A radical (called bùshǒu in Chinese) is a graphical component of a Chinese character under which the character is listed in a dictionary.

But more importantly for learners, the radical often tells you the meaning of the word.

For example, if you see a character with three little drops of water on the left side, there’s a 90% chance that word is related to liquid, water, or washing.

Keep reading and I’ll explain the most common ones you need to know.

How Chinese radicals work

Imagine you are looking at the English word “starfish”.

Even if you had never seen that word before, you recognize “star” and “fish”. You can guess that it is a fish shaped like a star.

Chinese characters work the same way.

Most Chinese characters are made of two parts:

1. The Meaning Component (The Radical): This gives you a hint about what the word means.
2. The Sound Component: This gives you a hint about how to pronounce it.

Let’s look at a classic example: the character for “Mother”.

This character is made of two parts:

• 女 (nǚ): This means “woman” or “female”. This is the radical. It tells us the meaning.
• 马 (mǎ): This means “horse”. This is the sound component. It tells us the pronunciation is similar to mǎ.

When you combine “Woman” + “Ma” (sound), you get Mā (Mother).

Why you need to learn them

You might be thinking, “Zoe, do I really need to memorize another list of things?”

The answer is yes, but you don’t need to learn all of them.

Historically, there are 214 Kangxi radicals. That is a lot.

However, you only really need to know the top 30 to 50 common ones to see a huge improvement in your reading.

Here is why they are helpful:

1. You can guess meanings.

If you see the character 河 on a sign, and you spot the water radical on the left (氵), you know it has something to do with water. (It means “river”).

2. It makes memorization easier.

Instead of memorizing 10 random strokes, you are just memorizing two “blocks” put together.

3. It helps you use dictionaries.

Paper dictionaries organize words by their radical. Even digital dictionary apps often allow you to search by radical if you don’t know the Pinyin.

The most common radicals (with examples)

To get you started, I have put together a list of the most frequent radicals you will see in beginner and intermediate Mandarin.

If you learn these, you will start recognizing them everywhere.

Here’s a sentence that uses several of these radicals.

Look closely at the characters:

Did you spot them?

• 她 (She): Uses the Woman radical (女).
• 喝 (Drink): Uses the Mouth radical (口).
• 水 (Water): This is the character for water itself!

Position changes and shapes

One thing that confuses beginners is that radicals can change shape depending on where they sit in the “square” of the character.

Just like you might squash a pillow to make it fit into a box, radicals get squashed to fit into a character.

The “Person” Radical example:

When “Person” (人) stands alone, it looks like this: 人.

But when it is used as a radical on the left side of a character, it gets squashed into a thin standing line: 亻.

• 人 (Person - standalone character)
• 你 (You - notice the squashed person on the left)

The “Water” Radical example:

When “Water” (水) stands alone, it looks like this: 水.

But when it is used as a radical on the left side, it turns into three little splashes: 氵.

• 水 (Water - standalone character)
• 海 (Ocean - notice the three drops on the left)

Don’t worry too much about this. You will naturally get used to the “squashed” versions as you practice writing.

Simplified vs. Traditional radicals

As you may know, there are two writing systems: Simplified Chinese (used in Mainland China and Singapore) and Traditional Chinese (used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau).

While many radicals look the same in both, some were simplified to make them easier to write.

If you are learning Simplified characters, you will use the simpler versions. If you are learning for a trip to Taiwan, you will need the Traditional ones.

Here are the most common differences:

The concept remains exactly the same. The Traditional “speech” radical still indicates that the word is about talking, language, or communication. It just has more strokes!

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Radicals are the secret key to unlocking Chinese reading.

Once you stop seeing characters as random scribbles and start seeing them as combinations of radicals (meaning) and phonetic parts (sound), learning new vocabulary becomes much faster.