3.1 Tips for learning Chinese characters 10

3.2 Prevention from misuse of the rules 10

IV. Conclusion 11

References 12

Appendix 13

I. Introduction

With China being the biggest developing country in the world and its constant and rapid development since the reform and opening-up policy was implemented in 1978, more and more countries begin to think highly of China and more foreigners start to learn Chinese while English still dominates in the language competition. As English has become a sort of linguism, Chinese ushers in a new age of language fashion with more and more Confucius institutes having been founded around the world during recent years. Therefore, how to learn Chinese better and more efficiently plays an increasingly significant role in those foreigners’ life of learning Chinese.

No matter who are learning English, the English language native speakers or foreigners, can both beware of the functions of affixation and apply it in the language use. There is no doubt that some changes, in terms of pronunciation, form and meaning, take place after adding the particular affixes to the corresponding roots. For example, some noun-making affixes such as –ness, -er, -ation, -ity change the part of speech of the roots from an adjective or verb into a noun, with a few changes in pronunciation, form and meaning though. Through analogy between English affixes and Chinese radicals in terms of their place in a word or character, we can simply study the functions of Chinese characters as we do to English affixes. 

In the current Unified Chinese Characters Table, there are 201 radicals in all. Chinese character radicals are the foundation of characters as well as guiding principles. As long as characters exist, so do radicals. Hence it can be seen that knowing the impacts of Chinese character radicals on characters is quite essential to whoever are learning Chinese. Despite the change from philology principle which focuses on character meanings to indexing system principle which emphasizes character form, Chinese character radicals can still affect one’s understanding of characters and help learners avoid some unnecessary errors. (朱晓娜 2008:16 ) 

1.1 Concepts of Chinese characters and radicals

Although Chinese characters used on the mainland today were simplified once, their main pictographic features can still be recognized. Each Chinese character, combination of pronunciation, form and meaning, represents a monosyllabic Chinese word or morpheme. Chinese characters can be classified into six types according to their formation. They are pictograms, ideograms, ideogrammic compounds, rebus, phono-semantic compounds and transformed cognates. Among them, an ideogrammic compound is mostly formed by two graphic components, and a phono-semantic compound is by one graphic component and one phonetic component. Chinese character radicals are a concept of the traditional Chinese character theory, which is part of ideogrammic compounds or phono-semantic compounds indicating pronunciation or meaning. (田霞 2012:9 ) If we scrutinize Chinese characters, we will find that Chinese character radicals play an essential role in their formation. Chinese character radicals should be distinguished from Chinese character components in that all radicals are all character components whereas not all of components are radicals. The relationship between radicals and components are as that between a part and a whole. Generally, the components which contain meanings are called radicals or semantic radicals, such as氵(sandianshui, indicating “water”), 扌(tishoupang, indicating “hand”), 口(kouzipang, indicating “mouth”), 犭(fanquanpang, indicating “animals”), while some are components rather than radicals like 央 in 英, 者 in 都, 去 in 法, etc. Hence, radicals are selected from components and radicals are especially those components with ideographical expression. However, when all components of a Chinese character signify meanings, the only one that expresses the meaning most can be regarded as its radical. Take 看(kan, indicating “look” or “see”) for example. It is composed by two components, 手(shou, indicating “hand”) and 目(mu, indicating “eyes”). Because 看 indicates “look” or “see” as a verb, it has more to do with 目(mu, indicating “eyes”). As a result, 目(mu, indicating “eyes”) is chosen to be the radical of 看. Here “radicals” all mean Chinese character radicals and so do the radicals in the following parts. This paper will focus on a small part of radicals of Chinese characters which can be used alone with their own intrinsic meanings called free or semi-free monosyllabic morphemes. In this way, those foreigners who are learning Chinese will find it easier to learn this kind of Chinese characters.  汉字部首对汉字的影响(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_49367.html