The radical 心 can combine with other parts in two different ways to form new characters. Continue reading “Radical heart 心”
Category: Decode Characters
豸 y 犭
You will not even care how terrible these characters 豹貘貂 look only if you know they are labeled with 豸. The same applies to 犭.
1. 豸zhì, a savage beast, denotes animals when it combines with other characters.
2. 犭, originally 犬quǎn(dog), also denotes animals when it combines with other characters.
Tips:
Most of the words formed by 犭and 豸 are semantic left-phonetic right, such as 狮shī (师shī), 狼láng(良liáng); 貘mò(莫mò). So when you see characters with 豸 and 犭, you know their meanings are related to animals, and then just check the right parts for their pronunciations.
力 or 刀？
力 lì denotes strength, and it combines with other characters to express meanings related to strength, force, energy, movement, etc.
刀 dāo denotes knife, and it combines with other characters to express meanings related to people’s acts with knife.
Tips:
Characters formed with 力 and 刀 can be both phonetic left-semantic right and phonetic top-semantic bottom. What’s more, characters combined with 力 and 刀 can in turn form phrases with 力 and 刀 to express meanings related to 力 or 刀, such as 努力, 动力; 剪刀, 劈刀
The “sharpest” knife 刀 in Chinese
刀 dāo is mostly turned into刂 to express different acts with a knife, or other concepts related to knife. So for knife-related meanings, you will see in most cases characters with刂 but not with 刀.
Tips: characters with刂 are mainly phonetic left-semantic right, such as 肖xiāo +刂 ＝ 削xiāo, 朵duǒ +刂 ＝ 剁duò.
They have the exactly same pronunciation as that of 平
平 is so loyal!
All these characters with the component 平 are pronounced the same as 平 píng. As for their meanings, just check the semantic parts, e.g 枰 ＝ 木 + 平（枰, a kind of tree)，鲆 ＝ 鱼 + 平(鲆, a kind of fish).