Here's an example of a recurring class of question: How can I find all the kanji/hanzi that include the component 孰 (this component is a kanji of its own right, but it is not in RTK1, at least). This component appears in at least two of the kanji in RTK, namely #309 / 塾 / cram school and #310 / 熟 / mellow. The question is: are there more (either in RTK or not)? This example illustrates one particularly tricky aspect of this question: as it often happens, in this case what differentiates those characters that contain the component 孰 is precisely the radical used to classify them! For example, 塾 is classified under 土, while 熟 is classified under 火 (灬). So in this case, there's no single radical under which we may be able to find a stash of characters containing the component of interest.

Although I'm interested in answers to the question "what other characters include the component 孰", my question is more general: what tools exist to find all the characters that include a given subcomponent?

Any ideas?

TIA!

~*

P.S. Any question about "all the kanji/hanzi" is inevitably plagued by the fuzziness of this description, since there are thousands of obscure characters, probably far more than those can be recognized by most highly learned readers. As a first approximation, let's say that I'm mostly interested in the ~6000 kanji (whichever those are) included in the Level 1 of the Kanji Kentei, aka Japanese Kanji Aptitude Test (日本漢字能力検定試験).

P.S.2: Why am I interested in this question? Because I want to decide how much mnemonic value there would be in a nickname for such a subcomponent, one, that is, that may or may not have any relation to its own primitives. The mnemonic utility of such a nickname increases with the number of characters in which the component appears. If it appears in only one or two characters, the little mnemonic value of the new nickname would be offset by having to memorize one more nickname. For example, I found it useful to define the new nickname "genealogical tree" for the subcomponent 枼 ("generation" + "tree", gitit?), because it appears in at least 5 RTK characters, namely #228 / 葉 / leaf, #521 / 蝶 / butterfly, #2158 / 喋 / chatter, #2726 / 諜 / secret agent, and #2926 / 牒 / label. (Thanks to Kazuo for this observation.)

I use Jishop(not free)

(hint, poor people --> "Jishop 3.0")

Edit: Jwpce(free) can do that too, but I prefer Jishop as it is much faster

Edit edit: Also, in giving my two cents, I also think that any primitive regardless of how often it exists in something has 'mnemonic value'. Take 融 for example which appears in 隔 as well. Without zekun's primitive "old camera' I for the life of me would have had a really hard time with that primitive. Don't worry about 'wasting space' or 'time' in your brain for a primitive that doesn't appear in other characters.

But that being said, it does help knowing how many other characters exist using that same primitive.

[Katsuo]

Taking your example of 塾 and 熟 I found that among the JIS set of 6,355 characters there is one more kanji that contains those primitives, namely 孰. That only took about three seconds using the KanjiGen in a denshi jisho.

How? By using the parts search (部品読み) and typing in こ & まる (for 子 and 丸). If you have a denshi jisho it's worth learning the Japanese names for some of the more common primitives as that is often the quickest way to find kanji. (I made a table of equivalent names here).

You could do the the same thing pictographically on this Multiradical Search page, using 子 and 九.

Regarding whether it's worth giving names to particular unnamed primitive combinations, I compiled a list. There's link near the top of this post.

Are you familiar with looking up kanji by its constituent components? (by traditional radical or by components.) See WWWJDIC’s "multi-radical kanji" or Jisho.org’s "kanji by radicals", for example. iirc, Wakan is by both radicals and parts. In other words, you'll get a list of all kanji containing that set of components.

I use Ben Bullock’s kanji lookup. The radicals are separated by position and frequency, and the results are displayed as you select each radical. This saves time b/c you can often select your kanji after clicking only a couple radicals. I noticed that his newer version has multi-radical, handwritten as well as four-corner look up.

Have you seen Katsuo’s post and lists? Primitive combinations not given a name. I'm not actually sure what is it, but I think it might be related to your question. :-)

More generally, if you haven’t discovered them already, Katsuo has generously created and shared various useful kanji-related lists here.

[edit: looks like Katsuo and I were typing at the same time]

liosama Wrote:I use Jishop(not free)

(hint, poor people --> "Jishop 3.0")

Edit: Jwpce(free) can do that too, but I prefer Jishop as it is much faster

Ah, I wasn't even thinking of desktop software. In this case, I should have specified that my machine is a Mac. Unfortunately, neither Jishop nor Jwpce run on Macs. >

liosama Wrote:Edit edit: Also, in giving my two cents, I also think that any primitive regardless of how often it exists in something has 'mnemonic value'. Take 融 for example which appears in 隔 as well. Without zekun's primitive "old camera' I for the life of me would have had a really hard time with that primitive. Don't worry about 'wasting space' or 'time' in your brain for a primitive that doesn't appear in other characters.

I'm not as good as others at thinking up mnemonically catchy nicknames; it takes me a fair bit of effort. I want to make sure the effort is worth it... But if it's ready-made, I'll take it! Thanks for sharing the "old camera" nickname!

Katsuo Wrote:Taking your example of 塾 and 熟 I found that among the JIS set of 6,355 characters there is one more kanji that contains those primitives, namely 孰. That only took about three seconds using the KanjiGen in a denshi jisho.

How? By using the parts search (部品読み) and typing in こ & まる (for 子 and 丸). If you have a denshi jisho it's worth learning the Japanese names for some of the more common primitives as that is often the quickest way to find kanji. (I made a table of equivalent names here).

You could do the the same thing pictographically on this Multiradical Search page, using 子 and 九.

Regarding whether it's worth giving names to particular unnamed primitive combinations, I compiled a list. There's link near the top of this post.

Ah, it was one of your stories that inspired me to come up with nicknames for complex sub-components. Now I get to thank you properly.

And thanks also for this reply. It has a ton of useful pointers.

Katsuo Wrote:If you have a denshi jisho it's worth learning the Japanese names for some of the more common primitives as that is often the quickest way to find kanji. (I made a table of equivalent names here).

Thanks again for that list! I'll add it to my daily memorization routine.

How does one say in 日本語 the "(nick)name of radical"? (At first I thought that kun-yomi (訓読み) would be close enough, but then I noticed that some of those names are actually 音.) Do the Japanese have a generic word for these "radical names"?

TIA!

-

部首

mezbup Wrote:部首

I don't know if this is what I meant. Let me explain better.

I have a table (derived from the one that Katsuo posted) that begins like this:

radical: 一
nickname: いち

radical: 丨
nickname: ぼう

radical: 丶
nickname: てん

radical: 丿
nickname: の

radical: 乙
nickname: おつ

...etc. But I want to write the entire table, including the labels "radical" and "nickname", in Japanese. I'm missing the Japanese word for nickname in this context. So I have:

部首: 一
???: いち

部首: 丨
???: ぼう

部首: 丶
???: てん

部首: 丿
???: の

部首: 乙
???: おつ

...etc.

My question is, what should I put in place of ??? in this table?

Well it's not a "nickname" as such, it's the actual name of the radical. I know exactly what you mean but you're splitting something that's 1 thing up into 2 separate things which it isn't. If you we're to describe to someone using only words how to write an entire kanji you'd say the radicals used and they'd know exactly what you mean because what the radical is called and how it is drawn is really one entity.

if it'll satisfy you:

通称
つうしょう
popular name
nickname
alias

The Kanken uses different terms for them. They use 部首 for the actual shape and 部首名 for the name of the radical. In another place, in a radical chart, they use 名称 for the radical name.

[Katsuo]

gfb345 Wrote:My question is, what should I put in place of ??? in this table?

I'd suggest 部首名（ぶしゅめい）or 部首の名前（ぶしゅのなまえ）.

gfb345,
If you're just writing mnemonics, you're overthinking the process. Give your brain a little credit and just use the first mnemonic that comes to mind: it will be much easier to remember and much quicker.

Otherwise, it sounds like you need to get a kanji dictionary. There are a host of electronic kanji dictionaries and probably some online resources, but to me, the whole concept of an electronic dictionary is bassackwards so I never use them. There's no flipping the pages and browsing through entries you never knew you wanted to read, and they either rely on a personal computer or batteries which go dead. As for real kanji dictionaries, I like the New Nelson because you can look up any kanji by any radical in the kanji, which could be very useful for looking up all the kanji to contain the primitive components you're looking for. The Spahn/Hadamitzky dictionary, however, is also extremely useful as it lists each kanji's compounds, not just by the first kanji in the compound, but by each element, although you can only look up any given kanji by its "primary" radical, unlike with Nelson. You could probably get a copy of each for the price you pay for a good electronic dictionary, and they won't ever malfunction.

The speed and portability of an electronic dictionary vs. a paper one makes it for me not even a contest (not to mention the jump feature). I haven't used a paper dictionary for Japanese in a long, long time. My dictionary uses 2 AAA batteries every 6-9 months or so, which is hardly a huge expenditure. And it's not really true that you can't "flip pages"; I often just type in a random letter and scroll down through the entries to see what's there.

Yesterday in class I had my electronic dictionary with me and used the Koujien, Genius J-E, Obunsha classical, and the Kanjigen. I only paid $150 for my electronic; I'm not sure if paper versions of those 4 would add up to $150, but there's no way I would have lugged all 4 to class even if I had them.

Katsuo Wrote:I'd suggest 部首名（ぶしゅめい）or 部首の名前（ぶしゅのなまえ）.

部首名 will do nicely. Thanks!

Thora Wrote:Are you familiar with looking up kanji by its constituent components? (by traditional radical or by components.) See WWWJDIC’s "multi-radical kanji" or Jisho.org’s "kanji by radicals", for example. iirc, Wakan is by both radicals and parts. In other words, you'll get a list of all kanji containing that set of components.

I use Ben Bullock’s kanji lookup. The radicals are separated by position and frequency, and the results are displayed as you select each radical. This saves time b/c you can often select your kanji after clicking only a couple radicals. I noticed that his newer version has multi-radical, handwritten as well as four-corner look up.

Have you seen Katsuo’s post and lists? Primitive combinations not given a name. I'm not actually sure what is it, but I think it might be related to your question. :-)

More generally, if you haven’t discovered them already, Katsuo has generously created and shared various useful kanji-related lists here.

Thora, somehow I missed your post the first time around. Thanks for the very useful links.

yudantaiteki Wrote:The Kanken uses different terms for them.

Pardon my ignorance. I imagine that "Kanken" is short for Kanji Kentei, but I infer from your post that you are referring to either a book or a website. If this is so, what's the full title so I can find it?

yudantaiteki Wrote:They use 部首 for the actual shape and 部首名 for the name of the radical. In another place, in a radical chart, they use 名称 for the radical name.

Thanks for these translations. I'm going to go with 部首名 because I can almost understand it!

I was just referring to the Kanji Kentei in general; many of the levels ask you to write radicals and radical names for given kanji. I was referring specifically to some preperation books for level 3 and 2.