Chinese Radicals List: the 100 Most Common, with Meanings & Audio

A Chinese radical (部首 bùshǒu) is the recurring part a character is filed under in a dictionary — and usually the part that tells you what the character means. Every character written with 氵has to do with water; every character with 木 has to do with trees and wood. There are 214 radicals in the traditional Kangxi set, but a hundred of them do nearly all the work, and those are the ones listed here.

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Transcript

1. What do river and sea share in Chinese?
2. Watch both written at once, they start with the same three strokes.
3. 河
4. Those three drops are the water radical.
5. So a new character with it, like lake, is about water too.
6. 湖
7. The part repeats, and so does the meaning.
8. Three drops on the left mean water.

Below are the 100 most common Chinese radicals, grouped by stroke count the way a radical dictionary lists them. Each one shows its pinyin name, meaning, an example character that uses it, a button to hear it, and — tap the radical itself — a stroke-order animation.

Radicals — 1–2 Strokes

Radicals — 3 Strokes

Radicals — 4 Strokes

Radicals — 5+ Strokes

Why Radicals Are the Fastest Way In

Roughly 80–90% of Chinese characters are phono-semantic compounds: one part (the radical) hints at the meaning, and another part hints at the sound. Take 妈 (mā, mom) — the radical 女 (woman) tells you the meaning category, while 马 (mǎ, horse) supplies the pronunciation. Once you recognize the common radicals, a brand-new character is no longer a wall of strokes; it is a meaning clue plus a sound clue you can often guess.

Radicals also make characters lookup-able. Every paper dictionary and most apps let you find an unknown character by its radical and remaining stroke count — impossible if you can't spot the radical. And because radicals follow consistent stroke-order rules, knowing them tidies up your own handwriting too. A practical plan: memorize the ★ core radicals first, notice them inside every new character you meet, then fill in the rest over time.

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