In the history chapter we saw that characters are composed of a radical and a phonetic and that this is the basis for how they are classified in dictionaries. Some radicals occur very frequently and are well worth a more careful look. Dictionaries use over two hundred different radicals. Below I will present thirty-odd of the most common ones and give examples of characters in which they appear. You should practice the characters until you master the radicals. For certain radicals that tend to be hard to write, I have added detailed instructions on how to overcome the problems.

The name of each radical is given in English and Chinese. You need not learn the Chinese names immediately, but the list will be handy to refer to when you do want to memorize them. Whereas the Chinese names usually have little or nothing to do with the history and development of the characters, the English names are more informative.

For radicals that can be used independently as characters, I have included the pronunciation and meaning of the independent form. Sometimes the usage is a result of the simplification reform and is unrelated to the history of the character. Where the history of the radical is well known and can serve as a mnemonic aid to learning the characters, I touch on it briefly.