The List of Chinese Radicals (1)

  Radicals are the basic component of Chinese characters. Think of Chinese characters as molecules like water or salt and then the radicals as equivalents to element atoms such as sodium, hydrogen, or oxygen.
  Just like Chemical elements, many radicals can make single characters by themselves. The character口 (mouth), for example, is frequently used as radicals in characters related to mouth such as 唱, meaning ‘sing’.

  Radicals are very important to the meaning and writing of Chinese characters. Here are two examples. First example, 男 means “man”. It is made up of 2 radicals vertically. The upper part is 田, meaning farm land and the lower part is 力, meaning labor or force. Therefore, it is easy to remember the character because the labor at the land is often male people. Another example: the character 林means “forest”. Since 木 means wood, it should seem obvious that doubling wood would make a forest.