Practice

Radicals

Radicals are the parts characters are assembled from. Once you know them you stop seeing a new character as a random set of strokes: it breaks down into familiar pieces, and those pieces hint at meaning and pronunciation.

Why they matter

There are a great many characters and far fewer radicals, and radicals repeat. Knowing a few dozen makes hundreds of characters readable: an unfamiliar character turns from a picture into a combination of parts you can take apart and remember.

The same knowledge stops you confusing lookalikes. Pairs that seem identical to a beginner differ precisely by their radical — and once you know it, the difference is obvious.

How progress is marked

Radicals have no stages or intervals the way words do. There is a simple mark: not studied, in progress, known. You set it yourself and it stays until you change it.

That simplicity is deliberate. A radical is not something you need to produce instantly; recognising it inside a character is enough. A review schedule here would add load for a skill that settles through reading anyway.

Where they appear

Radicals arrive inside the daily session alongside words and grammar. There is also a separate section listing them: there you can study any radical, see its shape and meaning, and set its state by hand.

What to do if…

Radicals do not appear in my session

They are part of the session on the Plus plan. Radicals also switch off temporarily when a large vocabulary backlog has built up, and return once the queue is cleared.

I marked a radical as known and it is still in the list

The mark is saved and does not change by itself. The list shows every radical regardless of state — look at the mark on the radical itself.

I do not see why radicals need separate study

They do not strictly need it — you can just do your sessions. But a couple of dozen radicals worked through noticeably speeds up remembering new characters, which is why they are a track of their own.