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Radical 51

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
← 50 Radical 51 (U+2F32) 52 →
(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

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.

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 "liver" (which falls under radical 130 肉 "meat").

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

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In origin, the character may depict either a pestle or a shield.[citation needed] It can be traced to the seal script.

Derived characters

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Strokes Characters
+ 0
+ 2 SC/TC/JP/KO
+ 3 (also SC form of -> / -> )
+ 5 /Kangxi (=并)
+10

In simplified Chinese

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As a character (not a radical), has risen to new importance, and even notoriety due to the 20th-century Chinese writing reform. In simplified Chinese, takes the place of a number of other characters with the phonetic value gān or gàn, e.g. of "dry" or "trunk, body", so that 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 gàn "tree trunk; to do" (rarely also "human body"), rendered as 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 as "fuck", resulting in a large number of signs with irritating English translations throughout China, often mistranslating gān "dried" as in 干果 "dried fruit" in supermarkets as "fuck the fruits" or similar.[1]

Sinogram

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The 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

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References

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  1. ^ Victor Mair, The Etiology and Elaboration of a Flagrant Mistranslation, Language Log, December 2007.
  2. ^ 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

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  • 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]
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