TextFugu Kanji Radicals, Part 6
“By logic and reason we die hourly. By imagination we live.” – John Butler Yeats
Go through these stories and read them. Live them. Breathe them. When you’ve read each story, and think you have around 60-70% of these radicals down, study them on Anki to help solidify. When you’ve done that, move on to Kanji 6.
Bamboo
See the two K’s that make up bamboo? Bamboo pwns, kk? You could also think of the KKK (yowch) using Bamboo to do their nasty deeds.
Rice
Of course, I think you see the tree in there. Rice, however, has “branches” coming out in all four directions, not just downwards. This is a stalk with grains coming off it in all directions.
Small Pile
This radical combines my pile of stuff with small. Therefore, this is a small pile.
Flattened Mountain
This radical combines mountain with two horizontal pieces going through it, making up the flat portions of the mountain. They had to flatten the mountain in order to develop it and build a slide.
Sheep
The farmer had to add horns to the antennae to keep the sheep from eating it.
Feathers
See the two barbs? There are three feathers coming out of each. This is how the first airplane was built (very unsuccessfully).
Rake
See the rake at the bottom, the handle, and then the top part? It’s a little scrunched, but this is definitely a rake!
Three Branch Tree
You remember the normal tree, and the two branch tree. Add another branch and you have a three branch tree.
Ear
A bit more elaborate than an eye (but very similar). When you go blind, your ears become your new sense of sight. See all the lines sticking out, too? That’s because ears stick out more than eyes do.
Brush
Think of this more like a fancy toothbrush. The main bristles come out the left side, but on the back side there are all manner of tongue and gum cleaners. Just remember, there are 5 bristles sticking out, and three of those bristles are covered on the back side.
Meat
When you overturned the box, you found two people inside… the aliens were eating (people) meat!
Self
That little fleck on your eye makes it your own eye. Your self.
My Grave
You have the ground (covering everything on top), with the me radical, and then a grave down below, making it “my grave.”
Broken Sun
The sun is splitting from the top! What will happens when it breaks in half completely?
Tongue
Slide into ten mouths and you will always run into the tongue.
Boat
In this radical, you can see the sail (i.e. the overturned box radical) with two splashes of water hitting the top parts. Holding the sail up is a T-shaped mast. This is what lets the boat move forward.
Clothes
A kettle lid covers the jumbled mess of clothes (you’ll have to memorize the jumbled mess part, though this is a pretty common radical).
Good
It feels good when the sun dries some of your clothes. The clothes part at the bottom isn’t exactly the same as clothes (above), but it consists of most of it.
Color
You are trying to encase the very colorful and wide-eyed snake but your container is too small. The snake is so bright, with greens, blues, reds, pinks, and other crazy colors.
Seven Cliffs
“Seven” is inside the cliff, and there is someone standing on top of each of the seven cliffs.
Bug
This radical consists of a mouth radical and a tall me radical. “I put a bug in my mouth” (and it tasted terrible).
Blood
There’s a spec of liquid on that plate. Is that blood!?!
Go
The radical for loiter is coupled with two barbs (two radical & barb radical). You would not loiter if there were two barbs coming at you, you would GO!
West
Two legs from the ceiling creep into your mouth. At this point, you decide it’s time to head back West, where weird things like this don’t happen.
Now that you’re all done going through these, you should know around 50% of them just by looking. Do another read through and I imagine you’ll get up to 60%. When you’ve got a good percentage of these done, download Radicals 6 and review + practice the radicals.
When you’re all done, move on!