Take the 2-minute tour ×

I have seen a lot of kanjis with two dots on the top as in 前、咲く、呼ぶ、etc. What is that radical? In http://jisho.org/kanji/radicals/, I see they have mentioned this two dot radical in their list, but when I look it up in any proper Kangxi radical chart, I see no such radical.

Is it a combination of two ´「てん」? If it is, how do such dots make any meaning? Another similar example in this regard would be the "diagonal sweeping stroke" in kanjis like 呼ぶ and 町. How to arrive at meanings with such radicals?

share|improve this question

3 Answers 3

up vote 11 down vote accepted

In all three, the two dots are 八. As an element in other characters, 八 often appears upside-down; sometimes it depends on the particular font which way it faces.

As for meaning, we can consult a variety of sources, but they all agree on the basics: Zhongwen.com describes 八 as "an ideograph representing division". Henshall says it symbolizes "splitting/dividing", and is often found in compounds with a meaning of "divide/disperse/away/out". ChineseEtymology.org says that it's a primitive pictograph with two lines indicating "separation".

But note that strictly speaking each character has only one 部首, because 部首 are a system for indexing characters in dictionaries, and each character appears under only one 部首 in most dictionaries. So although 八 is a Kangxi radical, not all characters containing it are listed under 八.

share|improve this answer
Thanks for the detailed answer. Any idea what that diagonal stroke in　町 means? –  Steel Jan 30 at 16:37
@Steel 町 has two elements: 田 (a pictograph of a rice field) and 丁 (a pictograph of a nail). The latter is the phonetic element, giving the character its pronunciation. What specific meaning it lends to 町 is debatable; Henshall says it "was used phonetically to express walk, and also lent its T-shape to suggest junction of paths. [町] originally meant paths through the fields, and by extension place where fields join, then area/community." –  snailboat Feb 12 at 6:21
+1 for clarifying that "radical" does not refer to each element of a kanji, especially when you want to be clear. –  hippietrail Mar 31 at 4:44

This boils down to the question "What is a radical?"

In the loose sense, it's any part of a kanji, which occurs in a number of characters.

In some stricter sense, it's one of the 214 kanji radicals that have been used to index kanji characters ever since they appeared in the 1615 Zihui 1716 Kangxi Dictionary dictionaries.

For searching by applying a filter, having more radicals means more options to narrow down the characters to find the one you are looking for.

The radicals in the latter, stricter sense have a Japanese name. In general, the others don't.

Whether you consider a part of a kanji a radical or not, you can often describe parts either in terms of other kanji or in terms of katakana characters. This is because katakana characters are derived from kanji in the sense that they are precisely only a small characteristic part of a full character. Notably, ソ derives from the two dots on 曽. So any such dots can be said to "be" ソ.

For example, the 偕成社 6th year 漢字練習ノート says for 呼ぶ

くちへんに　ノ　ソ　よこ一で　たてまげはねる

Most if not all occurrences of the ソ "radical" are derived from the 八 radical (which is a radical in the strict sense), so 曽 itself has 曾 as traditional variant. In this sense ソ "is" also 八.

share|improve this answer
Also worth mentioning is that there are more than 214 commonly reused elements, so some "radicals" is the loose sense are never "radicals" in the strict sense, while in some characters every element may also be used as a "radical" in the strict sense in other characters. Then there are elements which occur in few or even in a single character, it makes even less sense to think of those as "radicals". –  hippietrail Mar 31 at 4:49
Also, many of the most complext traditional radicals make no appearance whatsoever in the 常用漢字, even when you add in the 人名用漢字. Or, in the case of 鼓, they are the only element in the lone character they appear in. –  Kaji Mar 31 at 5:09

はちがしら / hachigashira

however, the 部首 of your examples are:
前 = りっとう
咲 = くちへん
呼 = くちへん

Trying to derive meaning from radicals can be a fool's errand in many cases.

share|improve this answer
Well it can be a fool's errand if you expect to find a logical system, like always for etymology and spelling in natural languages. On the other hand knowing the radical can help with mnemonic memory tricks for learning characters and can help for those times when you need to use a radical index. –  hippietrail Mar 31 at 4:52
Agreed. Radical knowledge greatly increases one's ability to recognize and distinguish new characters—not to mention writing characters without references. –  Kaji Mar 31 at 5:10

Your Answer


