Kanji: Keys, Radicals and Phonetics

[yevgeny]

Hello,

I want to better understand some sub-elements and categories of kanji.
As it is known, all kanji characters are divided into 214 groups according to a specific element in it called "key radical". All these 214 radicals are kanji by themselves. But there are much more elements ("secondary" radicals) in kanji than 214 key radicals and some electronic dictionaries even allow searching by these elements in order to find a specific kanji.

My questions are:
- How many such radicals exist?
- Is this number of radicals an official information like 214 key radicals, or it's flexible and each e-dictionary presents it according to its consideration?
- Are all these radicals kanji by themselves?
- Are all these radicals supported by Unicode?

And now about phonetics.
The book I am learning with is divided into lessens and in each lesson there is some number (20-30) of new kanji presented. For each kanji that has phonetics, the book states what is its phonetic (it's either the kanji itself or its sub-element). That's all the information about phonetics in the book.

My questions are:
- Please show a short example of phonetics' usage.
- Is the number of phonetics in Japanese fixed and if so, how many phonetics exist?
- Are all phonetics kanji by themselves?
- Is a phonetic element in each phonetic kanji necessarily either the kanji itself or one of its radicals?

Thanks,
Yevgeny

 

[nice gaijin]

I want to better understand some sub-elements and categories of kanji.
As it is known, all kanji characters are divided into 214 groups according to a specific element in it called "key radical". All these 214 radicals are kanji by themselves. But there are much more elements ("secondary" radicals) in kanji than 214 key radicals and some electronic dictionaries even allow searching by these elements in order to find a specific kanji.

My questions are:
- How many such radicals exist?
- Is this number of radicals an official information like 214 key radicals, or it's flexible and each e-dictionary presents it according to its consideration?
- Are all these radicals kanji by themselves?
- Are all these radicals supported by Unicode?

Regarding radicals, I'm not sure of the exact number, but there are many (214 is a lot, but that's possible). It's good to understand radicals, as they help you learn and remember the kanji, but I never used them that often for searching in an electronic dictionary, because in many cases, multiple radicals are present in a single character, and it's unclear which one is the 'key' radical... Unicode doesn't let you enter characters by radical, if that is what you're asking. Although there are individual characters for radicals that happen to also be a kanji on their own.

And now about phonetics.
The book I am learning with is divided into lessens and in each lesson there is some number (20-30) of new kanji presented. For each kanji that has phonetics, the book states what is its phonetic (it's either the kanji itself or its sub-element). That's all the information about phonetics in the book.

My questions are:
- Please show a short example of phonetics' usage.
- Is the number of phonetics in Japanese fixed and if so, how many phonetics exist?
- Are all phonetics kanji by themselves?
- Is a phonetic element in each phonetic kanji necessarily either the kanji itself or one of its radicals?

I think you are misusing the term "phonetics" here; phonetics is the sound system in a language. Are you talking about readings? I don't understand what you are asking here.

 

[yevgeny]

I think you are misusing the term "phonetics" here; phonetics is the sound system in a language. Are you talking about readings? I don't understand what you are asking here.

Ok, I don't mean "phonetic" here as the sound system in a language. I don't know the exact term in English related to specific kanji in Japanese that have a sound sub-element. I just translated this term directly from Russian. And of course I don't mean kanji reading (ON and KUN).
I mean that a kanji has sub-elements (radicals) where some are semantic, some are phonetic and others are neither semantic nor phonetic sub-elements. You can google for "kanji phonetic element" to see more information.

 

[nice gaijin]

ahh, perhaps you are talking about this phenomenon:

The Phonetic-Ideograph, which is a combination of a semantic element with a phonetic element. For example to form the character for mosquito (蚊), which is pronounced BUN in Japanese and WEN in Chinese, take the character for insect (虫) as the ideographic/semantic element, and add a phonetic element that is pronounced the same as the word mosquito (文, BUN in Japanese and WEN in Chinese). Here, the meaning of the phonetic element (文) is not relevant (the character 文 means cultural). This category represents about 85% of all Chinese characters and is therefore the largest, by far.

There are many characters that get their onyomi from their radicals, so there are many characters that look similar (because they share radicals) and also share readings. This is just a function of the nature of radicals and the limited number of sounds available in Japanese.

 

[JimmySeal]

My questions are:
- How many such radicals exist?
- Is this number of radicals an official information like 214 key radicals, or it's flexible and each e-dictionary presents it according to its consideration?

I don't know the exact number myself, but the set and number of radicals is more or less fixed. 214 sounds about right. Note that some of these 214 have multiple variants, so the 214 figure is the number of radicals not including variants.

- Are all these radicals kanji by themselves?

Most, but not all. The top part of 安 and the left part of 次 are both radicals, but are not kanji by themselves. Moreover, the left part of 泳 is a radical, and is not a kanji character by itself, but it is a variant of the radical 水, which is a kanji by itself.

- Are all these radicals supported by Unicode?

I believe all the radicals and variants are supported by Unicode, but Japanese text encoding only supports the radicals that are kanji by themselves.

- Please show a short example of phonetics' usage.

永, 詠, and 泳 all have the ON-yomi "EI." 甫, 捕, 舗 and 圃 all have the ON-yomi "HO."
But due to changes throughout history, kanji with the same phonetic do not always have the same pronunciation. For example 盆 and 頒 have 分 as their phonetic element, but they are pronounced "BON," "HAN ," and "FUN/BUN," respectively.

- Is the number of phonetics in Japanese fixed and if so, how many phonetics exist?

The phonetic elements are not a specific set and while there may be a number out there, it is probably fairly large, and it is very different from the situation with radicals.

- Are all phonetics kanji by themselves?

Most are, but I believe some are not. Some of the ones that are, are obscure and rarely used kanji （甫 is one such example. 舗 and 捕 are quite common)

- Is a phonetic element in each phonetic kanji necessarily either the kanji itself or one of its radicals?

No, this is quite often not the case. Again in the case of 甫, it is the phonetic element of the others that I listed (and more) but it is not a radical.