Radicals in Kanji

Hi Jref,

I've been "studying" radicals on WaniKani for the last few days and have reached a point where I can practice my first Kanji.

Now I'm being told that the Kanji for eight consists of one radical, but in my opinion the Kanji and Radical don't look the same at all. (except for the left part of the Kanji and Radical. I mean, you could swap the right side of the Radical 180° on the vertical axis, but the top part would still be missing, except if you bent the swapped right side and elongated it - but what's the sense of using radicals to identify Kanji then? "The right side" of the Kanji looks like as a seperate radical to me)

Wani Kani has their own Radical:Name mapping and make you memorize Kanji by learning the Radicals that go inside Kanji and combines that with a mnemonic + a story.
I actually like this concept alot and wanted to try out the free part of the web app, but the Kanji for eight raised my suspicion and I felt frustrated, so I thought I'd ask the community.

Here's the Kanji on the pink background and the radical in the blue box which is called "Fins" (Not all radicals use the "official" naming - I found this site, which has namings, but are the "official namings" of radicals?)

What's yout thought about this? Thank you for reading and hopefully adding to this!



Edit:


Okay, so the site tells you that obviously it's not the same radical. Apparently "close" is good enough.
I'll keep practicing and see where it will lead me. I hope that there won't be too many modifications on radicals.
I'm thinking about creating a new radical for each of those modified parts but that would probably lead to a big mess and way more radicals...

If I recall correctly, in the sweeping language reforms of the post-war era, Japan's ministry of Education deemed that all kanji must contain one radical. This meant that kanji which historically had no radicals, were sort of forcibly allocated a radical even though it sometimes didn't make sense. I don't know if hachi is one of those kanji, but I suspect it might be. Anyway, there aren't many of them, so this shouldn't be a factor at all in your Japanese studies. Just accept it as a very minor departure from the norm and move on. Learning the radicals is an essential part of studying Japanese (and Chinese) and don't get sidetracked if not every radical looks or behaves exactly as you think it should.

And also note that the sharp corner you see in the kanji for "hachi" in your post, isn't necessarily duplicated when writing the kanji by hand. Handwritten forms are of course slightly different from printed font types

Thank you for this insight and the history behind it. Does that also mean that all Kanji, before the sweeping language reforms, looked different and that were altered afterwards?
I already assumed the radicals would need to be slightly modified, but honestly did't think it would be so extreme. (although this might still be a mild case compared to the "harder" Kanji to come)
I honestly didn't even know that radicals were even "a thing" and thought Kanji was taught by stroke order only. (Was this the case before the sweeping language reforms?) But now I know it is an essential part and will give it the proper attention it deserves.

Also thank you for the kaku-navi page link. I will use it as a tool to compare the printed font types to written form. Although, I've got to say, it's a little bit disheartening.
It's already so "hard" to learn Kanji and now I also have to think about what if the written form looks very different from the font type form.
Would you not have told me that "hachi" is not written as the printed font type, I wouldn't have been able to identify "hachi" in a scenario where I read a handwritten document someone wrote - although "I know" the Kanji for eight. (I know, it's a very extreme example, since I'm only starting out and more advanced students probably know a way to deal with this. But I think you understand what I mean)

I've encountered two more examples where "to" is used with a slight modification. But I will just - as you said - accept it as a very minor departure from the norm and move on.

although for above you could also use the "lid" radical rotated by 90°

I can already tell you the biggest problem you are facing is that wonky website you are using. It's giving you wrong information which is winding you up and sending you off in wild directions. 上 isn't composed of two radicals. It only has one radical, which is 一 (ichi). You could say has two components, a radical and another component, but it only has one radical.

Same for 下. This has the same radical, 一 (ichi).

So its OK to use your website if its helping you visualize and memorize kanji, but beware that it is giving you false information about the radicals.

As for how to think about this radical, you shouldn't imagine rotating the components or modifying the components to make it easier to remember. They are perhaps at their most useful when thinking that 木 (tree) is the radical for many things relating to trees or to wood-related products. Or that the radical 魚 (fish) is the radical for various fishes or seafood. With the abstract kanji, the radicals become more obscure and difficult to relate to the finished kanji.

Note that I've been studying Japanese for 30 years, and even I cannot name off the top of my head what the radical is for 八 or 上 or 下. I mean, I know they contain a radical, and my intuition is that the radical is the first stroke, but before I wrote this post I could not tell you with confidence that the radical for 上 is 一.

I will defend WK because I have been using it for a year now after having given up on fitting kanji into my brain in any meaningful way for last 20 years now.
And now I have real hope in making it through the 常用漢字. I'm at level 21/60 now.
First I suggest you read through their method. And then read it again.

But in summary their whole point of teaching "radicals" that aren't really official radicals is to help you remember. Whatever "trick" you can use to remember the kanji (meanings and pronunciations) is the most important thing. Eventually when a kanji gets embedded in your brain you won't need the tricks any longer. But until then it's crucial. They give you stories, mnemonics and their so-called radicals but of course you aren't restricted to their mnemonics. You can make your own and use their site to keep whatever notes you make. You can't make up your own radicals and you have to learn theirs which may be offputting to people like Majestic who have achieved kanji mastery in other ways.

Majestic said:

So its OK to use your website if its helping you visualize and memorize kanji, but beware that it is giving you false information about the radicals.

As for how to think about this radical, you shouldn't imagine rotating the components or modifying the components to make it easier to remember. They are perhaps at their most useful when thinking that 木 (tree) is the radical for many things relating to trees or to wood-related products. Or that the radical 魚 (firsh) is the radical for various fishes or seafood. With the abstract kanji, the radicals become more obscure and difficult to relate to the finished kanji.

Note that I've been studying Japanese for 30 years, and even I cannot name off the top of my head what the radical is for 八 or 上 or 下. I mean, I know they contain a radical, and my intuition is that the radical is the first stroke, but before I wrote this post I could not tell you with confidence that the radical for 上 is 一.

Click to expand...

To this point, it doesn't really matter what the "real" radicals are or if you know them or not. As you say in your last sentence, you don't think about that at all.
You may unconsciously think about those things when encountering a new kanji to help you with meaning or pronunciation but the WK system allows for that as well.
The main use the real radicals ever had in my life was for looking up kanji in a paper dictionary (and sometimes in electronic ones) but nowadays there's not so much need for that when you can simply trace the kanji out on your iPhone in order to look it up.

No time to really look now, but isn't that WK system effectively the same as Heisig's Remembering the Kanji?

So, when 'wani-kani' says 'radical', my understanding is that they actually mean 'commonly reused component'. They may be avoiding the term 'component' because that's what Heisig's RTK used and the RTK rights holders may be extremely jealous, possessive, and most importantly, litigious. Or maybe they just like the word 'radical' better even though it's not strictly accurate, idk.

(Note for those new to Japanese: a radical is technically the specific component of a character that the character is indexed by in dictionaries. Many characters contain multiple components that are used as radicals, but only one of them is 'the radical' of that character. However, it's somewhat natural for this term to be used sloppily by learners just to mean 'a reused component of a kanji'. The 'search-by-radical' feature of electronic dictionaries that is searching by multiple components to narrow down a kanji and not by 'the radical' at all of course encourages this confusion of the term.)

I also understand that wani-kani is a mnemonic system very similar to RTK, but with its own order, own set of names, and using somewhat more 'wordplay' style traditional verbal mnemonics and less of the 'visualization' that RTK encourages. The most important difference, however, is that Wanikani teaches a common word & reading alongside each character rather than strictly learning the characters by meaning first and then filling in vocabulary later.

I never paid for Wanikani, I only messed around with the free sample of it a little, and I could already passably read Japanese by then so I don't have the best understanding of it, but it does seem to me to be its own unique learning & mnemonics system, inspired by RTK certainly but not a copycat the way Kanjidamage was. Or is, if they're still around and haven't changed.

johnnyG said:

No time to really look now, but isn't that WK system effectively the same as Heisig's Remembering the Kanji?

Click to expand...

Well when I used RTK 30 years ago it was just the book and maybe some handwritten flashcards. Probably a modern system based on RTK could be similar.
The key technical component of WK is it's automatic spaced repetition system which is a kind of smart flashcards. It will change the timing of the kanji or vocab word depending if you're getting it right or wrong until you "burn" them and they don't appear again. The last repetition period is six months until the final "burn."

SomeCallMeChris said:

So, when 'wani-kani' says 'radical', my understanding is that they actually mean 'commonly reused component'. They may be avoiding the term 'component' because that's what Heisig's RTK used and the RTK rights holders may be extremely jealous, possessive, and most importantly, litigious. Or maybe they just like the word 'radical' better even though it's not strictly accurate, idk.

Click to expand...

Yes. They've chosen to call the components "radicals" as well. But that's basically what the term means. There is more than one type of radical classification system for kanji. So it's reasonable to use this word at the risk of confusion with the standard radical list.

SomeCallMeChris said:

I also understand that wani-kani is a mnemonic system very similar to RTK, but with its own order, own set of names, and using somewhat more 'wordplay' style traditional verbal mnemonics and less of the 'visualization' that RTK encourages. The most important difference, however, is that Wanikani teaches a common word & reading alongside each character rather than strictly learning the characters by meaning first and then filling in vocabulary later.

Click to expand...

Yes, it teaches all the kanji plus about 6000 common vocabulary. Really the power of it is in the ease of use in the web site, space repetition quizzing system and the fact that it's already set up, ready to go.

mdchachi said:

Yes. They've chosen to call the components "radicals" as well. But that's basically what the term means. There is more than one type of radical classification system for kanji. So it's reasonable to use this word at the risk of confusion with the standard radical list.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I mean... the thing is, 'radical' is this special term meaning 'the official dictionary index component'. If 'radical' is extended to mean all components, then you have to go back to pre-pending 'official dictionary index' to 'radical' ... completely obsoleting the whole point of having a term other than 'part' or 'component' to describe them.

It's understandable why the confusion occurs and the term naturally extends its meaning, it happens all the time and is why there are so many difficult to distinguish synonyms for all sorts of things in every language... it's just kind of unfortunate. Well, only 'kind of', seeing as how paper dictionaries and the entire radical index system are basically obsolete now. Keeping the term distinct was more important when radical lookup was a primary means of looking up a character.

SomeCallMeChris said:

Keeping the term distinct was more important when radical lookup was a primary means of looking up a character.

Click to expand...

If you've made it to the point of being able to use the dictionary lookup using the standard radicals, you should just call them 部首 (bushu).
Although to be honest, I never really learned that word until this past year (from Wanikani). Or maybe I learned it once and then immediately forgot it.
It never really came up in my every day conversations.
Wanikani also taught me 一夫多妻. I haven't found a way to fit it into everyday conversation yet but I'm waiting for the opportunity.

Alright, now I've learnt that "component" basically means radical. And radical means 部首 (bushu) in Japanese. (thanks to @mdchachi)
But I also know now, that in Kanji Kontext "radical" means 'the official dictionary index component'. ( thanks to @SomeCallMeChris)
Kanji are composed of "components", but only one of them is 'the' radical, by which it is indexed.
You can look up a Kanji by using a dictionary lookup using the standard radicals.
Also I found really interesting and eye opening, that many Kanji can have the same readings.

Learn Kanji with Radicals and Mnemonics: The Definitive Guide
Chapter: IDENTIFYING THE RADICAL

They complain that names of some official radicals might look like what they resemble but they dont hold any meaning.
Honestly, I don't really approve of all of their namings, but I guess it's better than calling three distinct radicals by the same name. So effectively they are renaming a couple of the official namings and creating their own ones to use them as building block to remember Kanji.
Going by this logic, I could also name them myself, if we're altering anyway - as long as it impoves my memorization, why not?



They say that not knowing what the meaning of the letter 's' in the word "stupid" is, is a lot like radicals and Kanji. Not knowing the meaning of a radical in a Kanji is not important, as it will will not tell you the Kanjis meaning - although they do add that "when it is important, we keep the official meaning"
But as @Majestic said: "木 (tree) is the radical for many things relating to trees or to wood-related products. Or that the radical 魚 (firsh) is the radical for various fishes or seafood"
So I do get an idea what a Kanji could be about by knowing that a radical it contains is related to such and such thing, right?

Another comment from the article: "Most Japanese people don't know the official names of these radicals either, and if that doesn't illustrate the unimportance of knowing the "official" radical names, I don't know what will."
But is this really true? Could not knowing the radicals by the official names be a problem at all in the future?
Is it enough to learn all the components/radicals Wani Kani throws at me? (So I will end up with more than the official 214 radicals)

Learning the Kanji by connecting them to bizarre/funny - memorable - stories is extremely fun and I find myself really getting along and remembering everything well with this method (I could add writing out the Kanji traditionally/digitally though, instead of just reading and typing them on the keyboard) (I've never learned Kanji before - although I heard about Heisigs RTK)
I really like that their spaced repetition quizzing and mnemonics system is, as @mdchachi said: "all set up and ready to go"

I'm afraid that not being taught, which radical is the official dictionary index component' - since it's not taught on WaniKani - could bite me back in the future.
While yes, most Japanese people might not know the official names of the radicals, is it the same for not knowing 'the official dictionary index component'?
I can see this becoming a problem, for example when wanting to lookup a Kanji in the dicitonary. What is your opinion about this?

Thanks for all the super helpful discussion and additions to this thread!

Supāda said:

Going by this logic, I could also name them myself, if we're altering anyway - as long as it impoves my memorization, why not?

Click to expand...

Yes, exactly. That's what the article says. They give you their whole formula. You could do it from scratch yourself.

Supāda said:

They say that not knowing what the meaning of the letter 's' in the word "stupid" is, is a lot like radicals and Kanji. Not knowing the meaning of a radical in a Kanji is not important, as it will will not tell you the Kanjis meaning - although they do add that "when it is important, we keep the official meaning"
But as @Majestic said: "木 (tree) is the radical for many things relating to trees or to wood-related products. Or that the radical 魚 (firsh) is the radical for various fishes or seafood"
So I do get an idea what a Kanji could be about by knowing that a radical it contains is related to such and such thing, right?

Click to expand...

I think a better analogy is the latin components of English. Sometimes they provide meaning to us and sometimes not. For example "bi" means "two." Bicycle, bicameral, etc. So a "bi" in a word can give us clues as to the meaning. But other parts of words such as the "cam" of "camera" doesn't mean anything to us now.
So to answer your question, yes, sometimes the parts of a kanji can give you clues as to its meaning or how it's pronounced. WK retains such common parts and meanings for the most part -- they also call 木 tree and 魚 fish. In the early levels there are many of these. But the kanji quickly become more abstract.

Supāda said:

Another comment from the article: "Most Japanese people don't know the official names of these radicals either, and if that doesn't illustrate the unimportance of knowing the "official" radical names, I don't know what will."
But is this really true? Could not knowing the radicals by the official names be a problem at all in the future?
Is it enough to learn all the components/radicals Wani Kani throws at me? (So I will end up with more than the official 214 radicals)

Click to expand...

I believe it's true but if you ever make it to an advanced level you can learn those names if you like. After all the names, are in Japanese and don't really conflict with the English names. But anyway you don't need the names to use them. They are listed in a table like here.

Supāda said:

I'm afraid that not being taught, which radical is the official dictionary index component' - since it's not taught on WaniKani - could bite me back in the future.
While yes, most Japanese people might not know the official names of the radicals, is it the same for not knowing 'the official dictionary index component'?
I can see this becoming a problem, for example when wanting to lookup a Kanji in the dicitonary. What is your opinion about this?

Click to expand...

It won't hold you back. If you look at the table I linked above you can see the official radicals and easily see which ones you can use for dictionary lookup. This really should be the least of your concerns.

All this being said, you should consider learning Japanese in a more holistic way. There are many people like you on WK who try to learn kanji first and some of them, amazingly, learn to "read" even without knowing much grammar. That's like learning how to pronounce and read English word without knowing how sentence structure works.

mdchachi said:

If you've made it to the point of being able to use the dictionary lookup using the standard radicals, you should just call them 部首 (bushu).

Click to expand...

Well, there is Nelson's which is for learners of Japanese and uses a radical system (not *quite* the official system, but only a very tiny number of characters were reindexed to make lookup consistent with how the characters are drawn), so you don't have to be fully immersed in the J-J references to be looking up by radical.

Supāda said:

While yes, most Japanese people might not know the official names of the radicals, is it the same for not knowing 'the official dictionary index component'?
I can see this becoming a problem, for example when wanting to lookup a Kanji in the dicitonary. What is your opinion about this?

Click to expand...

If you were looking up by radical in a paper dictionary, you would do so by its appearance and stroke count, not by its name.

The only time knowing the names of radicals was helpful in looking up was in a 電子辞書 (electronic dictionary) that I had that had a keyboard but no drawing pad... it included a feature where you could type the names of radicals to do lookup. Multi-component lookup too, so not really strictly radicals; I believe there were also recognized names of simple kanji that are never radicals.

There aren't many circumstances under which you would use any such dictionaries though. Even if you were going to be away from the internet, you'd still likely put a dictionary app on a phone, tablet, or laptop to take with you.

A 電子辞書 is going to run a lot longer on a single battery charge though, and be much lighter than books, so if you were going to be reading Japanese while isolated in the wilderness it might be a good choice... but you could just get one with a pad that lets you look up characters by writing them.

Pretty unlikely to happen to you though.

If you're like any normal modern student of Japanese, you're using a dictionary app on a computer, tablet, or phone. In that case, you can just write the character that you want to look up into your IME, and will never have to worry about radical names. Or even stroke counts really, as long as your writing looks reasonably close to the character on the page, the IME will probably produce the character you're looking for.

A lot of good comments here, and I found @mdchachi 's analogy about "bi" to be a useful one.

I'm probably in the conservative camp that says @Supāda is right to be somewhat fearful of learning radicals the wrong way. You don't need to know that the radical for 上 is 一, but it also is true that learning 上 as being composed of two radicals: "ground and toe", also comes with its own obvious dangers. Ground and toe are maybe handy memorization devices for foreigners, but if you are in a setting where there are Japanese people and you are referring to any kanji as having multiple radicals, or that, for example you "can't remember a certain kanji, but I know that one of its radicals is "toe", it will cause confusion and maybe some unwanted humorous reactions from your Japanese peers.

Its like the other analogy in this thread that I thought was inaccurate and dangerous

Supāda said:

not knowing what the meaning of the letter 's' in the word "stupid" is, is a lot like radicals and Kanji

Click to expand...

Not many of us know the Phoenician origin of the written letter "s", but we also don't go around calling it "that squiggly mark that looks like half of an infinity sign". We don't, for example, learn the word "stupid" as being based on the word "up", even though it is true that the letters up are indeed embedded in the word stupid.

So you don't need to know that 一 is the radical for 上, but you also don't need to know that "toe" or "ground" is a radical.

Majestic said:

So you don't need to know that 一 is the radical for 上, but you also don't need to know that "toe" or "ground" is a radical.

Click to expand...

The question is how you can remember the kanji 上. That is the whole point of why they are doing this. This one is pretty simple so most people probably don't need graphic imagery to help them remember its meaning. But you also need to learn at least two readings. A powerful way that works well for many people is to use imagery and make up stories. WK came up with the following for this one.

Meaning: Above, Up, Over
Meaning Mnemonic
You find a toe on the ground. It's weird, because it's above the ground, not where toes belong.
HINTS
Focus your imagination on how body parts should be buried, not above ground like this. Sure, finding a toe is a little strange, but finding a toe above the ground? Downright silly.

Pronunciation Mnemonic
Of course when you find a toe above the ground, you want to know where the toe came from. When you examine it, you see a name written on there. This toe belongs to the local clumsy farmhand, Jourm (じょう).
[Jourm is a recurring character in their mnemonics]

Kunyomi Pronunciation Mnemonic
Above you is a huge weight. You're holding it up and struggling (it's heavy!). You look up and try to crane your neck to see how much it weighs (うえ), but you can't see the numbers on the side of it. How long can you hold it above your head like this?

As long as learners understand what is going on (ie they are using "fake" radicals for memorization purposes) then it should all be good in the end. And they can avoid any undue embarrassment.