1. Chinese Radicals:

Note:

[忄]The radical "忄"evolved from the radical "心". This radical is always placed on the left side of a character. Most characters with the radical "忄" are related to psychological and emotional activities.

2. 形声字 [Xíngshēng zì] (Pictophonetic characters)

As we’ve introduced in the video of “ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CHINESE CHARACTERS” in lesson 1, there are mainly 4 formations of a Chinese character. Among them, 80% belong to Pictophonetic characters, which are called 形声字 [Xíngshēng zì].

形 [xíng] means “shape”, and 声 [shēng] means “sound”. 形声字 [Xíngshēng zì] consists of a “meaning part ”, the part of 形 [xíng], which shows you the possible meaning a Chinese character might be related to, and a “phonetic part ”, the part of 声 [shēng], from which you can guess how to pronounce this Chinese character. Note that the pronunciation of the character is not always exactly the same with the “phonetic part ” as the Chinese characters has evolved for thousands of year, but it can give you a clue to help you memorize a Chinese character more easily.

3. Types of 形声字 [Xíngshēng zì] (Pictophonetic characters)

There are different formations of 形声字 [Xíngshēng zì] (Pictophonetic characters), and the part of 声 [shēng] “phonetic part” can appear on the left, right, top, bottom, inside or outside. The “phonetic part” of the character is highlighted in orange as below:

4. 形声字 [Xíngshēng zì] (Pictophonetic characters) in this lesson

5. Look at the stroke order and practice writing the characters of new words.