Hello all,
I have come across the kanji ‘段’. And I wondered about what radicals are used in this kanji and what they mean.
I’m an avid user of Jisho, Kanshudo and Yellow bridge (mandarin) and on these websites I have learned many a thing about radicals, however, I can’t find out about the left-hand side radical of the aforementioned kanji. Where can I find such radicals that aren’t found on websites like Jisho?
6 comments
Understand that there is only one radical per Kanji, and it is used to make a kanji dictionary.
For your character the radical is 殳. (The part you are wondering about is not a radical and it is not decided where the shape came from. For false etymology and fast learning, you are probably best thinking of it as a simplified 長い，but it really is not that, though you might as well see it that way. I do not think it is a standard unicode point either)
The components, however, is where most learners have trouble, because 偉い has a radical of 亻 but the 韋 is the hard part to remember and Kanji dictionaries simply don’t list the various kanjis with 韋 in them together （韓国，違う，葦，衛生，偉い） Instead kanji dictionaries list them under the radicals of those kanji （韋，辶，艹，彳，亻）
The ability to list Kanji that are actually similiar was an innovation of RTK. And later Halpern systemized it with his crucial SKIP method, which allows simple systemization of Kanji). And then similarly, but less effectively Spahn/Hadamitzky, though they are more exhaustive. I have even found Kanji in Spahn that is not in either version of Nelson!
Since all three approaches (RTK, SKIP, Spahn) are copyrighted, and they protect those copyrights, you have to buy one of those authors works. But even then, trouble awaits as Halpern and RTK are not exhaustive, and (personal opinion) Spahn is not as easy to use.
You mean…dan? From 階段/段取り/一段 etc.? NGL, that’s not something I would classify as ‘obscure’, kanji or radical.
And with that in mind, the radical isn’t on the left here, apparently. [It’s on the right](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/kanji/%E6%AE%B5/).
I would venture to say it’s a hand grasping onto an object, similar to 筆.
edit: could just be symbolic of using a polearm to divide or cut something up.
I looked through pleco but the only thing i came up with is that the vertical portion is pronounced gun (3rd tone). As for the four horizontal strokes, i couldn’t find anything. Sometimes, a character just doesn’t exist as a separate part of a character or is only found as part of a single character or may show up as a variant. Sometimes, it’s just completely bound to another
Advice you or others may or may not need: I wouldn’t worry about radicals. Learn characters by meaning unit, not by kangxi radical. Radicals are ultimately useless in many cases. They’re really only a way to reference or index characters in paper dictionaries.
Edit: sometimes a radical has nothing to do with the meaning, or at least the modern meaning of a character. Some are purely sound elements. Some are even just filler.
As another poster wrote, the radical for 段 is 殳 (シュ) . It means a pike, spear, or other polearm.
Sincere question, where do so many new learners get the notion that “radical” means “any portion of a kanji”?
I asked a similar question a while back and was given this site : [https://www.kakimashou.com/dictionary/character/%E6%AE%B5](https://www.kakimashou.com/dictionary/character/%E6%AE%B5)
You can copy any character and it will break it down into its radicals for you. It was a god send for making my RTK deck when learning about the components. Hope you’ll find it as useful as I do.
Shirabe Jisho app you can write Kanji and then you can search through the results to see what radicals are in it. There’s many apps and websites that do this