{"id": "card_n_b1fe0fcce85f", "kind": "note", "title": "Chinese characters — radicals and phonetic parts", "body": "Even a 'pictographic' script decomposes: ~80% of Chinese characters are phono-semantic\ncompounds — a RADICAL giving the meaning-domain plus a phonetic part hinting the sound. The\nwater radical (氵) marks 河 (river), 湖 (lake), 海 (sea); and words compose from characters:\n电 (electric) + 话 (speech) = 电话 (telephone) — the very same 'far-sound' idea English builds\nfrom Greek. A few hundred radicals organize tens of thousands of characters, and the ~3,000 most\nfrequent cover the vast majority of text. Attributed empirical (the radical system is discovered,\nits meanings measured) — but the break-down/rebuild is unmistakable: even here, small parts,\nrichly combined.", "source": {"label": "Concordance assay — 2026-07-09", "url": "https://narrowhighway.com/s/5635602375b641735e6151d28fa5157a73b1a13df1da910f905c868a8251cf8b", "ref": "morphology", "authority_tier": "engine_derived"}, "shelf": "science", "box": "morphology", "bands": ["chinese", "hanzi", "radicals", "phono-semantic", "characters", "cjk", "compounds", "decomposition"], "connections": [], "author": "engine", "created_at": "2026-07-10T02:13:43.295355+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-10T02:13:43.295355+00:00", "visibility": "public", "lifecycle_stage": "public", "volatility": "permanent", "surface": "secular", "metrics": {"paperclips_count": 0, "helpful_count": 0, "not_helpful_count": 0, "cite_count": 0, "walks_through_count": 0, "flagged_count": 0}, "source_hash": "782a3581c0932c02460217fbe51789a603c3a1a19b32a8cf60e4181769db91d1"}