Since the two radicals of a poctophonetic characters express the meaning and the sound, it wil greatly help you if you can master these radicals. During our learning courses, you will gain the significance of the radicals and at the same time, you should have a reasonable point of view of the relationship between the charaters and their radicals. Not all the characters are related to their meaning radicals in meaning, nor are they related to the phoetic sides in sound; you should try to avoid taking that too absolutely, because the Chinese characters have undergone a history of more than 3, 000 years, and some changes have happened to the characters.
When the radical is powerful in expressing meaning or sound, please make full use of this advantage; when it is not very powerful, do not get confused, for your aim is to remember the character itself.
Answers to the question in last lesson:
| Characters |
Meaning Radical |
Sound Radical |
| 妈 (mā, means mother) |
女 |
马 |
| 们 (men, suffix to show plural) |
亻 |
门 |
| 种 (zhǒng, means seed) |
禾 |
中 |
| 近 (jìn, means close, near) |
辶 |
斤 |
| 机 (jī, means machine) |
木 |
几 |
| 钱 (qián, means money) |
钅 |
戋 |
| 注 (zhù, means to pour) |
氵 |
主 |
| 想 (xiǎng, means to think) |
心 |
相 |
