Radical 51 or radical dry (干部) meaning "oppose" or "dried" is one of 31 out of the total 214 Kangxi radicals written with three strokes.
| 干 | ||
|---|---|---|
| ||
| 干 (U 5E72) "oppose, dried" | ||
| Pronunciations | ||
| Pinyin: | gān | |
| Bopomofo: | ㄍㄢ | |
| Gwoyeu Romatzyh: | gan | |
| Wade–Giles: | kan1 | |
| Cantonese Yale: | gōn | |
| Jyutping: | gon1 | |
| Pe̍h-ōe-jī: | kan | |
| Japanese Kana: | カン kan (on'yomi) ほす hosu (kun'yomi) | |
| Sino-Korean: | 간 gan | |
| Names | ||
| Japanese name(s): | 干/ほす hosu 干/かん kan 一十/いちじゅう ichijū (chiefly primary education) | |
| Hangul: | 방패 banpae | |
| Stroke order animation | ||
 | ||
There are only nine characters derived from this radical, and some modern dictionaries have discontinued its use as a section header. In such characters that comprise 干 as a component, it mostly takes a purely phonetic role, as in 肝 "liver" (which falls under radical 130 肉 "meat").
干 is also the 27th indexing component in the Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components predominantly adopted by Simplified Chinese dictionaries published in mainland China.
Evolution
edit-
Oracle bone script character -
Bronze script character -
Large Seal Script character -
Small Seal Script character
In origin, the character may depict either a pestle or a shield.[citation needed] It can be traced to the seal script.
Derived characters
edit| Strokes | Characters |
|---|---|
| 0 | 干 |
| 2 | 平SC/TC/JP/平KO |
| 3 | 年 幵 并 (also SC form of 並 -> 一 / 併 -> 人) |
| 5 | 幷/幷Kangxi (=并) 幸 |
| 10 | 幹 |
In simplified Chinese
editAs a character (not a radical), 干 has risen to new importance, and even notoriety due to the 20th-century Chinese writing reform. In simplified Chinese, 干 takes the place of a number of other characters with the phonetic value gān or gàn, e.g. of 乾 "dry" or 幹 "trunk, body", so that 干 may today take a wide variety of meanings.
The high frequency and polysemy of the character poses a serious problem for Chinese translation software. The word 幹 gàn "tree trunk; to do" (rarely also "human body"), rendered as 干 in simplified Chinese, acquired the meaning of "to fuck" in Chinese slang. Notoriously, the 2002 edition of the widespread Jinshan Ciba Chinese-to-English dictionary for the Jinshan Kuaiyi translation software rendered every occurrence of 干 as "fuck", resulting in a large number of signs with irritating English translations throughout China, often mistranslating 乾 gān "dried" as in 干果 "dried fruit" in supermarkets as "fuck the fruits" or similar.[1]
Sinogram
editThe radical is also used as an independent Chinese character. It is one of the Kyōiku kanji or Kanji taught in elementary school in Japan.[2] It is a fifth grade kanji.[2]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Victor Mair, The Etiology and Elaboration of a Flagrant Mistranslation, Language Log, December 2007.
- ^ a b "The Kyoiku Kanji (教育漢字) - Kanshudo". www.kanshudo.com. Archived from the original on March 24, 2022. Retrieved 2023-05-06.
Literature
edit- Fazzioli, Edoardo (1987). Chinese calligraphy : from pictograph to ideogram: the history of 214 essential Chinese/Japanese characters. calligraphy by Rebecca Hon Ko. New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN 0-89659-774-1.
- Leyi Li: "Tracing the Roots of Chinese Characters: 500 Cases". Beijing 1993, ISBN 978-7-5619-0204-2
- Rick Harbaugh, Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary, Yale University Press (1998), ISBN 978-0-9660750-0-7.[1]
External links
edit