The Importance of Learning Radicals
Radicals are the key to becoming a Chinese master. A radical, or key (= 部首, bùshǒu), is a graphical component of a Chinese character. This means that every Chinese character contains a radical, but what does it tell you about the character? When you find the radical in the Chinese character it will give you an indication of the meaning of that character. Complex characters are made up of radicals. This means that it’s important for beginners to know the radicals and their meaning. A radial has several functions: it allows you to search a character in a dictionary, it hints at the characters meaning and it may even suggest the pronunciation! The modern system of Chinese radicals has 214 elements. So basically, every character in modern Chinese can be divided into these elements. Simple, right? The more you know the radicals, the easier you will be able to remember how to combine them with each other to form other characters. For example, the character for good, 好 , consists of 2 radicals. 女(woman) and 子(son). These exist as characters on their own, but form a different one when put together. 
Easy Way to Learn Chinese Radicals
There are many ways to learn Chinese radicals easily. The easy way to learn Chinese Radicals is by using the following steps exclusively;
Step 1: Learn Single Characters at a Time
The idea is to determine different meaning for single characters. It’s the first easy way to learn Chinese radicals. It will help in organizing the characters in such a way that you momentarily learn each character. It also important to note that, learning single characters avoids piling up of new characters which in many times confuses the learner. This is one of the easy ways to learn Chinese radicals.
Step 2: Link the Characters by Mnemonics
Another way to learn Chinese radicals is the part we apply the knowledge we gained about using mnemonics. Here we connect these new single characters we have learned to try and make a meaningful way that is easy for us to remember. Mnemonics is one of the easy ways of learning Chinese radicals as we use the things that are most familiar with us. It’s important to remember however; the more vivid the mnemonics is the easy it is to remember.
Step 3: Revise on the Mnemonics when Weak Links Appear
Weak links mainly occur when we forget about the mnemonics we created. Most times when we come up with a mnemonics, we tend to ignore it over a while. However, this can be avoided by making the mnemonics more vivid and applying all the unique characteristics of a good mnemonics. Mnemonics can be used easily and confidently and therefore helpful despite the complexity of the Chinese Radicals.
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