What is a phonetic set?

I quote from HanziCraft

A phonetic set is a list of characters where a component produces the same pronunciation clue towards each character.

For instance, the component 马, which is pronounced as ‘ma3′, can be found in these characters: 吗,玛,码,蚂,犸. They all have the same pronunciation ‘ma3′.

I decided to generate two lists. One where components have the exact same pronunciation as the character, and two, where the component has the same syllable but differs on tone.

You can see both lists here.

Interesting Findings?

令(ling2) is awesome! Just look at this list of all the characters that have the exact same pronunciation:

零,玲,铃,鈴,龄,齡,伶,翎,聆,羚,苓,蛉,呤,泠,囹,瓴,鸰,鴒,舲

And this one where it includes all the characters with 令, but with different tones.

领,領,零,玲,铃,鈴,龄,齡,岭,伶,翎,聆,羚,苓,蛉,呤,泠,囹,瓴,鸰,鴒,舲

You’ll see some characters overlap, because some characters have multiple pronunciations.

Combinality

As I mention on the page, combinality is still another variable to consider when you look at these lists. How trustworthy is a component in providing those clues to the character?

Read my post on sub-conscious variables in Chinese characters for more info. This is a variable that HanziCraft is working on trying to find. It’s not that hard, but just needs some more coding.

As a disclaimer to this post, I’d like to mention, that this topic will differ from person to person. There is a lot anecdotal evidence here. Mine included!

Just a nice pic of the gardens at the National Palace Museum. Courtesy of my girlfriend.

Immersion works better for beginners

I often feel that when people praise immersion, its people who went to a foreign country with very little knowledge on the language they will learn. Therefore, they have opportunities to quickly acquire a survival form of the language. For example, how to say where you’re from, send greetings, order a coffee/beer and ask where the toilet is. The kind of level you need to NOT fall on your face.

Going from there, depending on your circumstances, you can progress to some form of intermediate level. Even if all the language might be overwhelming for beginners, a survival form of the language requires very little effort to pick up and use. The feedback is instant.

Immersion for intermediate learners (like me)

I would say I’m at a strong intermediate level. Quite not advanced and just scraping at an upper-intermediate level. I’ve learned all the basics of the language before coming to Taiwan. Now, that I’m here, I feel like the lauded “immersion” progress is non-existent or just really slow. Maybe it’s like a surprise party that will never happen.

I struggle to feel the progress. Or maybe I’m just disappointed that my Mandarin is not improving as quickly as I hoped for. But here’s the thing, it’s not the environment’s fault. It’s mine.

Motivation is still the key

As with most things in life, especially, learning languages, motivation is the most powerful tool out there. Here I am in Taiwan, with all the language around me, but I’m not progressing as fast enough as I thought I would. It’s because I’m lazy. Simple as that. During the first month I made a conscious effort to learn more characters, listen to people talk and just absorb as much as I can, but then immersion fatigue set in. It was too much too quickly. 

Immersion, even if the language is all around me, needs the correct mindset and motivation to make it work. Being at an intermediate level makes this even more troublesome, because I don’t really “need” to learn more. I can do all survival things already. You need to make the effort, but don’t exhaust yourself. Ask yourself this question:

How I can use all this access and exposure to the language in an efficient way, that’s already in line with your own study routines and methods?

In there you will find success in immersion. It’s one I’m trying to answer myself. What is my goal and how I can use the exposure to the language to my benefit? Don’t expect a holy grail. It never works like that.

But there’s one thing that immersion does really well.

Listening and more listening!

Of all the things that immersion allows me to do, that I won’t do otherwise is spend lots of time on listening. I would never just sit and listen to conversations or something mundane like that, because really, who wants to do that? It takes a lot of time. However, here in Taiwan, I get so much listening practice for free as part of my everyday routine. Sitting on the train, going to shops, hearing my Chinese co-teachers talk. All these add up, which I would not have done otherwise.

If you look at the four strands of language learning, lots of input is one aspect of it. I feel like other areas of language learning, such as writing, speaking and reading still need inherent motivation to do even if you’re in an immersive environment. They take conscious effort. But listening is sometimes a tough one to crack, because it takes a lot of time. I feel like if there’s one thing that immersion can help you with regardless of motivation is listening to the language a lot more than you would have otherwise. Even if you don’t understand everything, it allows to get used to the flow and sound of the language.

My listening is one aspect of immersion, that I feel, has improved as I had hoped for.

Conclusion

Immersion is the not answer. You still need motivation to make it work for you. Listening however, is getting a nice free ride. So use it!

How has your immersion experience been? Share it with me!

Happy Year of the Snake everyone. It’s my year (born 1989), so hopefully it wil be a great one (please don’t bite)! Here’s an update on my life in Taipei.

Quick Update

I got a job teaching English (finally!) and everything is going smoothly, except for a bit of a cashflow problem at the moment. The final stage of my visa admin is almost done. My girlfriend and I are spending the Chinese New Year holiday relaxing and checking out some sights around Taipei. Can’t afford to go travelling too much right now.

My character learning has been slow. My schedule at work has been throwing me around, but I know that’s no excuse. I’m lazy. I know it. However, I can feel my listening improving a lot. Immersion isn’t necessarily the solution to all language learning problems (a future blog post for that!), but it sure as hell has made my listening practice easier. I eavesdrop… a lot!

Furthermore, I’m working on a project with Jake & Olle, as I’ve mentioned before, that’s taking quite a lot of my time. I’m also working on new features for HanziCraft. So I’m busy busy, but I’m going to make time for more Chinese very soon.

That’s all for now.

Have an awesome year! 新年快樂!

What I mean by this, is that when I want to look up a Chinese character to learn (especially for something like the Chinese character challenge) I want as much information possible to help me learn that character, especially regarding how some radicals affect your reading on a sub-conscious level.

Questions that come up:

• What are the radicals?
• How does the decomposition traverse itself?
• Is there any phonetic information available?
• Does this character have many definitions? How is it pronounced?
• Now that I know more of the character, where does it fit into vocabulary?
• Is the vocabulary useful?

Those questions are the ones that I want answered when it comes to a Chinese character dictionary. I have found some sites that can serve such a goal, but they are either badly designed, don’t have all the answers and/or is in Chinese only.

What will become of HanziJS?

HanziJS is the code behind HanziCraft. It is an open-source module for Node.js. This is the backbone. HanziCraft is thus an application of the code itself (hopefully other people will create their own apps with the HanziJS code in the future!).

If you are a coder, go check out the github repo. There’s quite a lot of updates to it, as well as quite a bit of refactoring (thanks Dusan!). I’m busy writing proper documentation for it.

Introducing HanziCraft

I think the best you can do, is to just visit the site and see for yourself. Check the info for the character 魔 for instance:

Delicious juicy info!

If you want to know how I determine the example words, find the question in the FAQ.

P.S. – If you see any question marks or blocks, then you need to install the proper font to display all the components. Download the font here.

Beta

HanziCraft is now in it’s beta phase. There will be bugs! But with this beta phase, you’ll get a discounted premium account. What do you get with a premium account? (Besides my eternal gratitude)

• Lookup more than one character at a time
• Favorite lists
• Your own user dashboard (currently showing your lookup history. I will implement character analytics in the future)
• No ads
• All future premium features forever free.
• AND Less hassle in learning Chinese characters (and who doesn’t want that!?)

Future Features

I’ve got quite a bit more features planned for HanziCraft. Some premium & some free. Here’s what to expect:

• Display potential phonetic information in the radicals
• Display similar characters based on components (if a character shares more than 50% similar components)
• Text Analysis (this will be a premium feature that will take a group of characters, perhaps an article and compute what you need to know from the text. This will include unique characters, unique radicals, frequency counts and other cool information)

With all this being said, I think HanziCraft is a tool that I created for myself, mainly because I had trouble finding all the useful information I needed. I was eager, like a crazy addict, trying to find the information I craved, and after countless hours HanziCraft was born.

I hope HanziCraft becomes your goto Chinese character dictionary. I’m building it to be my own goto dictionary, so tell me, what do you need to make it the ultimate Chinese character dictionary? I’ll try my best to implement the features you need. Happy learning!

Furthermore, it isn’t just an open goal for everyone to try on their own, but rather that you get assigned two challenge buddies. These people are a way to make you more accountable to the challenge. I’ve already emailed my challenge buddies, both with different goals, motivations & levels, which makes this so much more interesting.

Mnemonics

One of the ways to promote better learning of Chinese characters, is to employ mnemonics. However, for this, you need to actually start looking deeper into characters. What are the radicals? What do they really contribute? Take your time and be sensible. If you forget a character, why is that? Ask yourself these questions.

My own goals and motivations

I’ve sent this to my challenge buddies earlier this week. This challenge came at the right time to motivate me to use my time here in Taiwan to best of my ability. I’m in this environment where new characters are around me every day. However, some of these might be unfamiliar due to them being traditional characters.

So my goals are two-fold:

1) Get a deeper understanding of the switches between simplified and traditional.

2) Make sense of the world around me.

Here’s how I’m going to achieve this:

1) Start paying attention to characters around me that look familiar in context, but are in fact traditional characters. Write them down. Also, I’m going to find a list of characters that were changed from traditional to simplified to gain better insight in these changes. Not only do I want to do this, to learn more characters, but I feel that the heated debate of simplified vs traditional is something I can’t really give insight or my opinion on, without being informed of all these changes. At the moment I feel both have their merits, but let’s not get into that discussion now.

2) Be conscious and aware of my environment when I’m in Taiwan. When I’m on the commute to work, write down unknown characters. By the end of the year, I don’t want to see an unknown character. This is a tall order, but I think it’s totally possible. This will help me to go from just characters to interpreting vocabulary & sentences.

 My tools

- Notebook

- Skritter

- HanziCraft (a new site that I’m working on that I wasn’t going to release to the public until later this week, but I thought why not sneak it in here. I’ll do a big post about this site soon)

Don’t wait anymore

You are the only person who can take your learning to the next level. Why wait? I suggest you take part in this challenge. Let’s make Chinese characters as easy the ABC’s.

Let’s do this!: LEEERRRROOOOOOOOYYY JEEEEEEENNKIIIIIINSSSSS

Here’s what I’ve been up to so far.

Two Weeks in a Hostel

My girlfriend and I arrived in the middle of December. We stayed at a hostel right next to Shilin market. It was busy and chaotic, but we soon adapted. We’ve been slowly edging our way into all the delicious foods on offer in Taiwan. My first impression of Taipei was a bit mixed. Due to the rainy/humid weather here, most buildings were a bit more grimy and dilapidated than I expected. But I got used to it very quickly.

We saw this amazing rainbow one afternoon from our hostel window. [It even made the news that night on TV!]

My girlfriend was really lucky in finding a job teaching English to little kids quite quickly. I’ve been hunting for jobs, but have been going slowly. This week I’m going to pick up the pace a bit. I’ve got a few leads to follow up soon. I use Tealit and then just go schools themselves to ask if they have vacancies.

Finding a place to stay

During the two weeks in our hostel, we looked for jobs and also an apartment. By some lucky chance, my girlfriend found this beautiful place with an amazing view on a random Taiwan classifieds website. The landlord speaks pretty good English. The timing of the previous tenant leaving was perfect for us. We could literally go with our bags from the hostel straight to our new apartment.

It is situated in Zhuwei, which is a suburb of Danshui district in New Taipei. So it’s a bit north and bit more from the city than I expected to settle in Taipei, but the view and modern facilities is a nice comfort. My girlfriend works close by in any case and the subway trains give easy access to the city.

Here’s our view:

Xmas & New Years Eve

It was the first time spending the festive holidays away from my family, so I was a little bit sad. Luckily, I had my girlfriend with me who cheered me up. We ended up going ice skating at Taipei Arena, which is not our normal Xmas tradition. In South Africa it’s full on summer during the festive holidays. After that we went Christmast lights in Banqiao District.

For New Years Eve, we did not make any plans beforehand as we just moved into our new place and have been very busy with exploring and hunting for jobs. We decided to just head down to Taipei 101 and see the fireworks. We heard there were going to be lots of people, but did not expect THAT much people. Wow. It was unreal.

We wanted to get into a club, but all was sold out and way too expensive. We just drank some beers from 7-11 on the street and watched the festivities around Taipei 101. The fireworks in the end were beautiful. We then tried to head home… woops. Mistake. We only ended up getting home at 2h30am!

It did not spoil the evening, but for future reference we will try and organize something before: like a club, or a party at someone’s place.

Meeting up with Jake & Olle

One of the big reasons for coming to Taiwan, and specifically Taipei, is because I knew that there are like-minded Chinese learners here. Two of these are Olle (Hacking Chinese) on the left & Jake (iLearnMandarin) on the right.

I met up with them in the first week that I was here. We went for some delicious 热炒 and 啤酒. It’s fun to talk about languages and linguistics with them as they are both more advanced than I am. I learn a lot. We might consider starting a project in the future. You’ll have to wait and see.

My Mandarin

Now here’s the topic you’re all probably most interested in.

For the first three weeks, I’ve been slow in my Mandarin. I’m still settling in and try to find my routine. However, as everyday goes past, the language around me is slowly becoming clearer. It’s as if all the knowledge that I have learned up until now is slowly waking up and getting ready for action.

The switch to traditional characters has been no problem for me. I know enough simplified characters to understand the traditional characters in context. I still have to figure out my exact plan of action (I need a job first!), but as soon as I get one I’ll let everyone know.

I’m excited for 2013!

My girlfriend, coincidentally, also finishes her degree this year. She also studied Mandarin and wants to visit China. The timing is perfect… but, after long deliberation and many discussions, we’ve finally decided to head to Taiwan instead (not that it’s a consolation!)

Why Taiwan?

The reasons are complex. Some of which are personal, but for the most part, it’s easier for both of us, especially finding jobs and getting visas. South Africa is not so gifted with visas advantages as other countries (I’m looking at you US, UK and Europe. Lucky bastards). Also the Internet is open, which as a digital citizen is a high priority.

I’ve been in contact with a few people who work and study in Taiwan and it sounds great. One of the other big reasons for choosing Taiwan was that quite a few Chinese bloggers and learners reside there at present (Chinese Hacks, En Route to Fluency, Hacking Chinese, Horse Dragon Fish & iLearnMandarin among a few more on people on Twitter). I’m excited to finally meet these people who inspire me and have a few beers chatting about the Chinese language.

I’m also curious to expand my knowledge of characters into traditional characters.

Improve my Spoken Chinese

I’m embarrassed. My spoken Chinese is bad. I’ve got a big passive knowledge of Chinese and can read quite well, but speaking is way behind. It’s a part of the Chinese language that I’ve never really had to use, thus it never really improved. Now it’s trailing like rattling cans on a newlyweds’ car. Both my girlfriend and I want to go to Taiwan to improve our Mandarin. Try and make it as fluent as possible.

We will most likely get jobs as English teachers, as this is the easiest way to stay in the country without signing up at University (I’m over studying for now!). We’ll have to balance our usage of English versus learning Mandarin. I haven’t figured out my strategy yet, but I’ll find it (and blog about it) once I settle in.

I remember travelling in China last year, where the three weeks that I spent there, were some of the most fun and effective learning I’ve done.

Living Abroad

This will be my first time living abroad. I went to the same University where I went to school and have only travelled to other countries on maximum three weeks at a time. I’m scared and nervous, yet excited and eager. It will be an interesting experience and I’ll share some thoughts along the way. I’m seeing this as opportunity to not only improve my Chinese, but also grow personally. In saying that, I’m going to take all opportunities with open arms.

Besides I’ve always wanted to see more of Asia, so I’ll be using any spare time to travel outside of Taiwan as well. Japan is high on my list of places I want to travel to. Korea too!

The Initial Plan

We’re going to leave for Taiwan mid-December and will try and settle in Taipei. We’re planning on staying a minimum of one year.

If anyone has any advice or tips on Taiwan, jobs and living there, or just want to say “awesome man” then leave a comment below!

First Impressions

The first thing I noticed the amazing packaging and product design that went into ChineseCUBES. It’s not some cheap product shoved into a box, but it actually has a solid build and design. This gives off a very good first impression. You don’t get this in language learning products very often. When I opened it, there was a lot more than I expected: manuals, cd’s, whiteboard marker, character cardboard square (for writing on), a rectangle black pad to put the cubes on as well as a webcam.

The addition of the webcam was quite surprising. I expected just to use my own webcam, but then I realized, some computers, mostly desktops, do not have webcams, so it was a needed addition.

The Hardware

Now this is cool part of ChineseCUBES. I’m used to doing most of Chinese learning online, so actually having physical objects present is a welcome change. It’s not just a book or CD, but webcams, cubes and pads. The webcam was a bit strange to figure out (I don’t think I’ve ever used a standalone webcam before). It magnetizes to the stand. At first I thought it might topple over easily, but it manages to hold quite nicely.

The cubes themselves are also sturdy and lighter than I expected. It’s hard to guess an appropriate size for the cubes, as there hasn’t been a product like this before. In any case, they don’t fall around and are not too clunky. The vast of amount cubes however becomes a bit confusing when you have them all on your table.

The writing pen and square works fine with nothing really special.

The Software

When it came to installing the software to use with the webcam, the process was a little convoluted. You had to install it via cd, which itself is a strange choice, as CDs are being phased out in new MacBooks and ultrabooks. I would rather have it been on cute cube USB stick than a CD.

Then after installation you have register for an account on their website. With that account you can login using the software. I had some trouble with logging in once I created an account, because they asked me enter an “ID” with a password. I thought it was my username. After a few failed attempts, I realized they wanted my email address instead.

After logging in you enter your serial number written on the CD case.

Why can’t I just open the program and enter the serial number? What’s the point of having an account? Maybe there’s a reason for this. In any case after the installation, everything worked perfectly fine.

Using ChineseCUBES

Here’s the cool part. The webcam picks up the augmented reality tags on one side of the cube. On your screen the character pops up. When I first got the product I was skeptical that the augmented reality would be slow or iffy, but it works surprisingly well and is very responsive. Most of the time you would only have 1-4 cubes present on the screen, but I tested it with 15 stacked on each other. Every cube gets picked up and there’s no lag or crashing present.

The software has two modes: Learning & Freestyle.

In Freestyle mode, you get to just play around with the cubes. There are 40 character cubes available and then 5 Tutor cubes. The tutor cubes is a great addition to the characters, because they activate an action on the present cube. The present cube is the last cube added to the webcam. So for instance, when I place the Speak Tutor Cube, the program pronounces that cube and changes the character to Pinyin. A little avatar also pops up.

You also get a Write Tutor Cube, which shows you how to write it, strokes and all. You can then use your marker and square cardboard grid to practice. Wipe it clean afterwards. Quite nifty! Then there’s the translation cube, copy cube and Fang Fang. The translation one is self-explanatory, but the copy one is awesome.

When you place the copy cube next to a character it copies that character. So now you can write 谢谢 for instance.

The Fang Fang cube is still a mystery to me. An avatar just pops up.

Now here’s the cool thing. When you start putting random cubes together, the program starts suggesting words for you on the right side of the screen.

If you do form a word, it connects the bubbles together. Just thrown down the speech cube, or translation cube for more info. It’s extremely fun. Like a puzzle mixed with exploration. With 40 characters there are quite a few combinations to keep you busy.

Now for Learning Mode.

This mode was a bit disappointing. It takes you on a step-by-step tutorial of each theme; that is the good part. It really explains why certain characters were grouped together in a theme. You end up using all of them in learning one “theme” of 10 characters. The guidance is great and the pop-up tips by Fang Fang (the main avatar/tutor) is good.

However, they add these challenges to Learning Mode, which is basically just a Memory Match game. This feels pointless to me and definitely not a good way to test your knowledge. For some people this might seem nice and “game”-like, but it’s old and boring for me. I just end up clicking things until they match. There’s no skill and very little memory involved.

Where the design in Freestyle Mode wasn’t really a big focus, the design in Learning Mode fell flat. It looked outdated, unpolished and unwelcoming. For example, see the challenge screen above. When you win a “coin”, there’s this terrible overly-flashy animation that’s played.

At the end of a “theme” another type of challenge occurs, where a stimulus is given, such as a sound of word, characters or the pinyin. You have to choose appropriate answer when the carousel comes around. This again, is terrible user-experience design. When I look at the answer I sometimes take a split second too long. I then have to wait until the answer comes around again. Urgh.

The content of the Learning Mode is great, but it’s presentation is not on-par with the rest of the product. The challenges can definitely be improved.

Choice of Characters

Starting Chinese, the question comes to mind, where do I start? ChineseCUBES present 40 character choices. I ran the list of characters through the same experiment I did a few months back. Here’s what I got:

Possible Word Combinations: 112

Character List: 我是见很吗不好谢在你谁什她么的也这他那们对去家怎做起哪想里在先太姐请名问生小叫字

Not all those words can be formed by the system, for instance words like: 做小 and 起见. However, ChineseCUBES doesn’t only work on dictionary entries. It recommended quite a few phrase like structures, such as 我是 and 好小 for instance. I’m extremely curious how they do this.

It’s hard to say if the choice of 40 characters are the best option, but what definitely makes it worth it, are the themes they created around each group of ten.

Overall Impression

One of the questions I wanted to answer by using this product, was whether the augmented reality was just a gimmick or really added value? This is a hard question to answer as there aren’t really a lot of these products available. But here’s my opinion on this.

I think the augmented reality does add value. The visceral connection between the cubes and your screen is something that is hard to explain. I thought, of taking away the screen and just having the cubes, then I realized, they are pretty useless. The fact that the augmented reality adapts to your interactions, especially with word suggestions in Freestyle mode, definitely enhances the interaction.

If you just had the cubes, then there would not suggestions, no stroke order demonstrations, no instant popups and more. Thus, the augmented reality does add value. 

Could this experience have been replicated by just an online interface? Maybe, but having the actual cubes in your hands and playing with it, is something that cannot be replicated.

I think the Learning Mode though fails in this added value: the physical cubes and augmented reality, could easily have been replaced by a tutor-like system explaining the characters and their combos. However, the idea of “themes” around 10 characters, is clever way introducing characters and their relationships to vocabulary/phrase formation in Chinese.

The Learning Value

It’s a pity that I could not have tried ChineseCUBES when I started learning Chinese. This would have allowed to place the review in context of its learning value. However, I think ChineseCUBES is a novel approach to teaching you your first 40 characters. The Chinese script is unique and the cubes translate this quite well, especially the isolating morphology.

Playing with the cubes in Freestyle mode promotes curiosity and an understanding of how Chinese works. This is perhaps the biggest value that ChineseCUBES provide. I’m not sure how well you would be able to remember each word, or start using them in conversations, but it teaches the learner a unique meta-linguistic skill about the language itself, which I haven’t seen before. 

Oddly lacking is an introduction to radicals? Or their purpose as well. Therefore, ChineseCUBES, function more from the character-level up towards words and then phrase level.

Conclusion

With a price of $149, it is a little bit on the steep side, but ChineseCUBES is a very unique learning product. An iPad app would not be a replacement. The Freestyle Mode is really something else, that can really just exist with Chinese and the way ChineseCUBES implemented it. The Learning Mode falls flat, but the content itself is not bad and quite novel.

Beginner learners and Elementary learners would definitely benefit out of ChineseCUBES. Here’s the thing though, ChineseCUBES is not the most efficient and effective product out there. Skritter, Anki and other methods are definitely better, but ChineseCUBES fills a weird a gap between having fun, self-exploration, learning and introducing the learner to the unique aspects of Chinese syntax and vocabulary/phrase formation, which is definitely something that needs to be learned.

I would recommend this to people just starting out in Chinese, while using other methods. Spend 10-20min a day with ChineseCUBES in Freestyle mode, and you’ll learn a lot of the way the language is structured while picking up new vocabulary.

With that being said, ChineseCUBES is not a product that you need to use, as it does not easily fit in to the four strands of language learning. It’s a not a sustainable product, such as FluentU or Skritter that can easily fall into a language learning strand, to keep improving skills. ChineseCUBES, however, might fall into a strand of its own, which I discovered the other day on Leaky Grammar, called improvisation in language.

It allows you to explore the language and improvise using the Freestyle mode, without any care or rigid rules to stop you. It’s unique and very engaging.

If you’re frustrated and need a refreshing way to start learning Chinese, then ChineseCUBES will hopefully makes things a bit more clearer.

In summary:

+ Novel use of Augmented Reality

+ Helps you learn the unique features of the Chinese language.

+ Freestyle mode and their recommendations is a great way to explore and start with the Chinese language.

- Not necessarily very efficient or effective

- Learning Mode, although great in content, fails in presentation

- Slightly pricey

Meaning

玄 means black & mysterious, but other definitions also pop-up such as profound, dark & incredible. My first reaction, was huh? How can it have all those meanings? It’s not an easy one like other radicals (人 & 心 for instance).

I decided to find more clarity. After some searching I found this word: 玄奥. This means “profound mystery” or “the mysteries of the Universe”. Then it started making sense. Dark is related to the unknown & this can be mysterious, but also profound & incredible in the sense of its mystery.

The Death Star, before Luke destroyed it, could have been described 玄妙 (mysterious & profound).

As A Radical

This is all fine and dandy, but it seems 玄 as a radical is very rare. In HSK it appears in 蓄 (xù) which means “to store up”, which it makes sense to have the 田 (field) radical there. If you remove the 艹 radical at the top you get another character,畜 (xù), which means “to raise animals”.

Notice how both characters are pronounced the same: xù

玄 doesn’t act here as a semantic radical, but rather a phonetic clue to pronunciation. I decided to find some more characters that has 玄 in it. Here’s what I found:

弦昡泫炫牽玅玆玈玹眩舷蚿衒铉

Notice something? 玄 mostly occurs on the right. This an indication that it acts as a phonetic radical, providing pronunciation information in semantic-phonetic compounds. Only three characters seem to use 玄 as a semantic radical: 玅玆玈, of which one is just a variant of 妙 in 玄妙.

If you look at the pronunciation of the other characters you get this:

弦 (xián), 昡 (xuàn), 泫 (xuàn), 炫 (xuàn), 牽 (qiān), 玹 (xuán), 眩 (xuàn), 舷 (xián), 蚿 (xián),铉 (xuàn)

See the trend there? 玄 most definitely acts as a phonetic radical, rather than a semantic radical. It’s kinda disappointing that it isn’t used a semantic radical more often, ’cause it definitely has interesting meaning.

Conclusion

I find it strange that 玄 is actually included in the list of Kangxi radicals in the first place. The list of 214 radicals are semantic radicals. Phonetic radicals, by definition, are not included in this list. 玄 definitely lives up to its definition. 

Oddly enough, there’s another word that uses 玄: 玄乎, which means “unreliable”. 玄 is definitely that, totally unreliable as a semantic radical, but at least works as a neat phonetic radical.

Details

I used the characters I got from Nciku’s list. These characters also seemed to be organized by frequency on each level. I then used HanziJS’s radical decomposition code and got all the radicals in each character. I then ran each characters components and found the first unique occurrence of each component and noted the level of HSK it occurred in and which character it was found in. With this list of unique components I then compiled this list of radicals based on the KangXi list. The data was not entirely consistent, as I found some bugs in the decomposition data, but I edited the rest of the code by hand.

Here’s how the list works:

Nr of radical according to Kangxi Radical list: HSK Level, First Character Occurrence (additional information)

The additional information is where I listed findings based on bound radicals and simplified forms. This is especially true for some of the “not found” components where most are traditional forms. You won’t find them in HSK’s six levels.

Here’s the list. You can also download the .txt file too.

1) 一: 1, 一
2) 丨: 1, 在
3) 丶: 1, 的
4) 丿: 1, 不
6) 亅: 1, 了
7) 二: 1, 会
8) 亠: 1, 京
9) 人: 1, 人 (亻: 1, 们)
10) 儿: 1, 说
12) 八: 1, 期
13) 冂: 1, 同
14) 冖: 1, 学
15) 冫: 1, 冷
16) 几: 1, 机
17) 凵: 1, 脑
18) 刀: 1, 分 (刂: 1, 前)
19) 力: 1, 五
20) 勹: 1, 的
21) 匕: 1, 些
22) 匚: 1, 医
24) 十: 1, 年
25) 卜: 1, 不
28) 厶: 1, 会
29) 又: 1, 对
30) 口: 1, 中
31) 囗: 1, 国
32) 土: 1, 在
33) 士: 1, 喜
34) 夂: 1, 客
36) 夕: 1, 名
37) 大: 1, 大
38) 女: 1, 好
39) 子: 1, 学
40) 宀: 1, 家
41) 寸: 1, 时
42) 小: 1, 京 (⺍: 1, 学)
44) 尸: 1, 呢
46) 山: 1, 岁
48) 工: 1, 工
49) 己: 1, 起
50) 巾: 1, 师
51) 干: 1, 午
53) 广: 1, 店
59) 彡: 1, 影
60) 彳: 1, 很
61) 心: 1, 想 (忄: 2, 快)
62) 戈: 1, 我
64) 手: 1, 我 (扌: 1, 打)
67) 文: 1, 这
69) 斤: 1, 听
72) 日: 1, 是
73) 曰: 1, 喝
74) 月: 1, 有
75) 木: 1, 来
76) 欠: 1, 欢
77) 止: 1, 些
79) 殳: 1, 没
84) 气: 1, 气
85) 水: 1, 水 (氵: 1, 没)
86) 火: 1, 火 (灬: 1, 点)
88) 父: 1, 爸
96) 玉: 1, 国
99) 甘: 1, 期
100) 生: 1, 生
102) 田: 1, 果
106) 白: 1, 的
109) 目: 1, 看
111) 矢: 1, 医
113) 示: 1, 漂 (礻: 1, 视)
115) 禾: 1, 和
117) 立: 1, 站
119) 米: 1, 米
120) 糸: 1, 系
123) 羊: 1, 样
125) 老: 1, 老
135) 舌: 1, 话
138) 艮: 1, 很
145) 衣: 1, 衣
146) 西: 1, 西 (覀: 1, 漂)
152) 豕: 1, 家
156) 走: 1, 起
158) 身: 1, 谢
166) 里: 1, 里
172) 隹: 1, 谁
173) 雨: 1, 雨
176) 面: 1, 面
189) 高: 1, 高
23) 匸: 2, 望
26) 卩: 2, 迎
27) 厂: 2, 颜
43) 尢: 2, 就
56) 弋: 2, 试
57) 弓: 2, 张
58) 彐: 2, 雪
63) 戶: 2, 所
70) 方: 2, 房
80) 毋: 2, 每
81) 比: 2, 比
83) 氏: 2, 旅
92) 牙: 2, 穿
93) 牛: 2, 件
97) 瓜: 2, 瓜
103) 疋: 2, 蛋
104) 疒: 2, 病
108) 皿: 2, 篮
114) 禸: 2, 离
116) 穴: 2, 穿
128) 耳: 2, 最
130) 肉: 2, 肉
132) 自: 2, 自
133) 至: 2, 到
136) 舛: 2, 舞
137) 舟: 2, 船
139) 色: 2, 色
142) 虫: 2, 蛋
144) 行: 2, 行
157) 足: 2, 足 (⻊: 3, 跟)
175) 非: 2, 非
180) 音: 2, 意
203) 黑: 2, 黑
35) 夊: 3, 夏
54) 廴: 3, 健
55) 廿: 3, 世
82) 毛: 3, 笔
87) 爪: 3, 爬 (⺤: 1, 爱)
91) 片: 3, 片
94) 犬: 3, 然 (犭: 1, 狗)
101) 用: 3, 用
112) 石: 3, 碗
121) 缶: 3, 萄
122) 网: 3, 网 (罒: 2, 慢)
126) 而: 3, 而
129) 聿: 3, 健
134) 臼: 3, 瘦
148) 角: 3, 解
149) 言: 3, 信 (讠: 1, 说)
150) 谷: 3, 容
151) 豆: 3, 短
164) 酉: 3, 酒
171) 隶: 3, 康
177) 革: 3, 鞋
185) 首: 3, 道
186) 香: 3, 香
209) 鼻: 3, 鼻
11) 入: 4, 入
45) 屮: 4, 塑
65) 支: 4, 技
66) 攴: 4, 敲
68) 斗: 4, 科
71) 无: 4, 无
78) 歹: 4, 列
98) 瓦: 4, 瓶
107) 皮: 4, 被
124) 羽: 4, 翻
141) 虍: 4, 虑
143) 血: 4, 血
153) 豸: 4, 貌
165) 釆: 4, 播
167) 金: 4, 金 (钅: 1, 钱)
160) 辛: 4, 辛
184) 食: 4, 食 (饣: 1, 饭)
200) 麻: 4, 麻
207) 鼓: 4, 鼓
5) 乙: 5, 乙
52) 幺: 5, 率
105) 癶: 5, 登
110) 矛: 5, 矛
118) 竹: 5, 竹 (⺮: 2, 第)
127) 耒: 5, 籍
131) 臣: 5, 藏
161) 辰: 5, 震
188) 骨: 5, 滑
190) 髟: 5, 髦
193) 鬲: 5, 融
194) 鬼: 5, 魅
208) 鼠: 5, 鼠
47) 巛: 6, 巡
89) 爻: 6, 攀
95) 玄: 6, 蓄
155) 赤: 6, 赤
140) 艸: not found (艹: 1, 菜)
147) 見: not found (见: 1, 现)
159) 車: not found (车: 1, 车)
162) 辵: not found (辶: 1, 这)
163) 邑: not found (阝: 1, 都)
169) 門: not found (门: 1, 们)
170) 阜: not found (阝: 1, 院)
174) 靑: not found (青: 1, 请)
183) 飛: not found (飞: 1, 飞)
187) 馬: not found (马: 1, 吗)
154) 貝: not found (贝: 2, 员)
168) 長: not found (长: 2, 长)
181) 頁: not found (页: 2, 题)
195) 魚: not found (鱼: 2, 鱼)
196) 鳥: not found (鸟: 2, 鸡)
182) 風: not found (风: 3, 风)
178) 韋: not found (韦: 4, 围)
210) 齊: not found (齐: 4, 济)
211) 齒: not found (齿: 4, 龄)
199) 麥: not found (麦: 5, 麦)
205) 黽: not found (黾: 5, 绳)
212) 龍: not found (龙: 5, 龙)
90) 爿: not found
179) 韭: not found
191) 鬥: not found
192) 鬯: not found
197) 鹵: not found
198) 鹿: not found
201) 黃: not found
202) 黍: not found
204) 黹: not found
206) 鼎: not found
213) 龜: not found
214) 龠: not found

There might be some errors here somewhere. If you spot anything let me know!