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Indexing component of Chinese characters

A Chinese radical or indexing component is a graphical component of a Chinese character under which the character is traditionally listed in a Chinese dictionary. This component is often a semantic indicator similar to a morpheme, though sometimes it may be a phonetic 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 character meaning or pronunciation over time. The English term "radical" is based on an analogy between the structure of characters and inflection of words in European languages. Radicals are also sometimes called "classifiers", but this name is more commonly applied to grammatical classifiers (measure words).

In the earliest Chinese dictionaries, such as the Erya (3rd century BCE), characters were grouped together in broad semantic categories. Because the vast majority of characters are phono semantic compounds (形聲字), combining a semantic component with a phonetic component, each semantic component tended to recur within a particular section of the dictionary. In the 2nd century AD, the Han dynasty scholar Xu Shen organized his etymological dictionary Shuowen Jiezi by selecting 540 recurring graphic elements he called bù (部 , "categories"). Most were common semantic components, but they also included shared graphic elements such as a dot or horizontal stroke. Some were even artificially extracted groups of strokes, termed "glyphs" by Serruys (1984, p. 657), which never had an independent existence other than being listed in Shuowen. Each character was listed under only one element, which is then referred to as the radical for that character. For example, characters containing 女 nǚ "female" or 木 mù "tree, wood" are often grouped together in the sections for those radicals. Mei Yingzuo's 1615 dictionary Zihui made two further innovations. He reduced the list of radicals to 214, and arranged characters under each radical in increasing order of the number of additional strokes – the "radical and stroke count" method still used in the vast majority of present day Chinese dictionaries. These innovations were also adopted by the more famous Kangxi Dictionary of 1716. Thus the standard 214 radicals introduced in the Zihui are usually known as the Kangxi radicals. These were first called bùshǒu (部首, literally "section header") in the Kangxi Dictionary. Although there is some variation in such lists – depending primarily on what secondary radicals are also indexed – these canonical 214 radicals of the Kangxi Dictionary still serve as the basis for most modern Chinese dictionaries. Some of the graphically similar radicals are combined in many dictionaries, such as 月 yuè "moon" and the 月 form (⺼) of 肉 ròu, "meat, flesh". After the writing system reform in Mainland China, the traditional set of Kangxi Radicals became unsuitable for indexing Simplified Chinese characters. In 1983, the Committee for Reforming the Chinese Written Language and the State Administration of Publication of China published The Table of Unified Indexing Chinese Character Components (Draft) (汉字统一部首表（草案）). In 2009, the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China and the State Language Work Committee issued The Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components (GF 0011 2009 汉字部首表), which includes 201 principal indexing components and 100 associated indexing components (In China's normative documents, "radical" is defined as any component or 偏旁 piānpáng of Chinese characters, while 部首 is translated as "indexing component". ).

The character simplification adopted in the People's Republic of China and elsewhere has modified a number of components, including those used as radicals. This has created a number of new radical forms. For instance, in traditional writing, the character 金 jīn is written 釒(that is, with the same number of strokes, and only a minor variation) as a radical, but in simplified characters is written 钅 as a radical. That means, simplified writing has created a significant difference not present in traditional writing. An example of a character using this radical is yín "silver"; traditionally: 銀, simplified: 银.

Though radicals are widely accepted as a method to categorize Chinese characters and to locate a certain character in a dictionary, there is no universal agreement about either the exact number of radicals, or the set of radicals due to the sometimes arbitrary nature of the selection process. The 214 Kangxi radicals act as a de facto standard, which may not be duplicated exactly in every Chinese dictionary, but which few dictionary compilers can afford to completely ignore. They serve as the basis for many computer encoding systems. Specifically, the Unicode standard's radical stroke charts are based on the Kangxi radicals or radicals. The count of commonly used radicals in modern abridged dictionaries is often less than 214. The Oxford Concise English–Chinese Dictionary , for example, has 188. A few dictionaries also introduce new radicals based on the principles first used by Xu Shen, treating groups of radicals that are used together in many different characters as a kind of radical. In modern practice, radicals are primarily used as lexicographic tools and as learning aids when writing characters. They have become increasingly disconnected from meaning, etymology and phonetics.

Some of the radicals used in Chinese dictionaries, even in the era of Kangxi, were not standalone current usage characters; they indexed unique characters that lacked more obvious qualifiers. The radical 鬯 (chàng "sacrificial wine") indexes only a few characters. Modern dictionaries tend to eliminate these when it is possible to find some more widely used graphic element under which a character can be categorized. Some do indexing under more than one radical and/or set of key elements to make it easier to find characters.