Chinese character radicals

Indexing component of Chinese characters

A radical, or indexing component, is a visually prominent component of a Chinese character under which the character is traditionally listed in a Chinese dictionary. The radical for a character is typically a semantic component, but can also be another structural component or even an artificially extracted portion of the character. In some cases the original semantic or phonological connection has become obscure, owing to changes in the meaning or pronunciation of the character over time.

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