SKIP

No, not the detergent.

It's a kanji indexing method I just found out about today. Quite nice, really. Most of the time, I don't know either of the yomi for a kanji, and maybe it's not on my Learning the Kanji book. And well, just counting strokes and looking for radicals is kind of slow.

So I read in the Japan Times' Kanji Clinic site (www.kanjiclinic.com) article #60 about radicals, and then I just had the luck to stumble upon the review for the Kanji Learner's Dictionary (mmm... maybe I should buy that one next time, I do need a kanji dictionary).

It's like this: kanji are classified in 4 categories: #1 - left-right (相), #2 - top-down (高), #3 - enclosure (道) and #4 - solid (手), based on the flow of the radicals, as you can see. Then, according to the leading radical in the flow (the one to the left in left-right, top in top-down, enclosing one in the enclosure...), you count its strokes. Then the stroke count for the rest of the kanji comes next.

Using these 3 numbers, you can find kanji in no time. It's too bad only the WWWJDIC and Wakan allow you to index through them (Gjiten can't do it, and so far as I know, Nihongo Benkyô can't yet). Anyhoo, for example 相 is 1-4-5. There's another 25 kanji under the same index, but hey, it's pretty fast. Count up and that's it.

I also pretty much found out about bushu last week. I did know about radicals; I just didn't think they were so important, really, but apparently, the Nihongo Kanji Nouryoku Shiken (held in Madrid here in Spain) does test knowledge of the radicals. There's like 214, and each is named like X-{kanmuri,hen,tsuzuki,kamae,tare,nyou}, being X the reading of the radical itself, and the one of the rest the position in the kanji.

* kanmuri (crown) is on top, covering everything else (like the "grass = kusa" radical in 花 - hana - flower, so it's kusa-kanmuri).
* hen (side, perhaps?) - on the left (nin-ben, like in 侍 - samurai)
* tsuzuki (continuation) - on the right
* kamae - covering everything else (like the square in 困, koma[ru] - trouble, known as kuni-gamae, for its appearance also in 国, kuni - country)
* tare - something hanging down, like in yamai-dare 病 (yama[i], sickness)
* nyou - L-shaped, this time acting as support

Keh. See, I got the Kanji Boy 2 ROM a few days ago and played a little. It's a GBC game with past Nihongo Kanji Nouryoku Shiken exams. So far I've reached 7-kyuu (lowest level you can actually sign up for) without many problems. There's "virtual" levels for lil' kids, like 8-kyuu, 9-kyuu and 10-kyuu, which don't really exist.

Still, when 7-kyuu came, there went the bushu. To my obvious ignorance, of course. I was like "'select the bushu appearing in the kanji from the 3 following ones?' whuh? did radicals actually have names? o.O".

By the way, that reminds me of Hikaru No Go and the lil' extra 3 minutes after the show where they taught you how to play. I think they started from 40-kyuu to grade strength (till 1-kyuu, and then there's 1-dan, 2-dan, but those are for pros), but real players start from like 20-kyuu. 21-kyuu and above don't really exist, it's just a way of speaking.

Anyhoo, my blurb of the week is over. See ya!