Radical Table

Chinese characters can be decomposed into components called radicals or bushou. Being able to recognize the common radicals helps in the learning and recognition of new characters. Each Chinese character on the right-hand column of the following table contains or is classified by a radical. Occasionally a radical may simply be a character. The radicals displayed in the table can be seen in radical indexes of most Chinese dictionaries for simplified characters. However, some characters are catalogued under different radicals. For instance, a same character can be found under a particular radical in one dictionary but under another in a different dictionary. The radical usually, but not invariably, gives a name or clue as to the meaning of the character, as can be seen from the second column of the following table.