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For example, in https://ceritabahasa.co/2015/01/07/tabel-radikal-bushou-hanzi/

character 犬 quǎn means dog seems to contain character 大 which means big.

It seems to me that quan is just da with extra apostrophe or something.

What am I missing?

Radical for two and three also obviously contains radical for one. It's just radical one done three times, for example, for three.

dROOOze
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user4951
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2 Answers2

8

To ask an analogous question about the shapes of the letters in the Latin alphabet:

Does the letter "E" contain the the letter "F"?

It seems that "E" is just "F" with an extra horizontal line on the bottom.

In terms of shapes in the modern script, it is trivially obvious that "E" contains the strokes of "F". What "E" does not contain is any functionality of "F"; the sound of "F" does not contribute anything to the sound of "E".

"E" containing the strokes of "F" does not explain any functional relation between "E" and "F", if there is any at all. Similarly,「犬」containing the strokes of「大」provides no explanation of the functional relationship between those two, and this is what you're missing.

For reference, "E" and "F" are unrelated. From Wikipedia:

enter image description here

The Latin letter 'E' differs little from its source, the Greek letter epsilon, 'Ε'. This in turn comes from the Semitic letter hê, which has been suggested to have started as a praying or calling human figure (hillul 'jubilation'), and was probably based on a similar Egyptian hieroglyph that indicated a different pronunciation. In Semitic, the letter represented /h/(and /e/ in foreign words); in Greek, hê became the letter epsilon, used to represent /e/. The various forms of the Old Italic script and the Latin alphabet followed this usage.

enter image description here

The origin of 'F' is the Semitic letter vâv (or waw) that represented a sound like /v/ or /w/. Graphically it originally probably depicted either a hook or a club. It may have been based on a comparable Egyptian hieroglyph such as that which represented the word mace (transliterated as ḥ(dj)):

enter image description here

The Phoenician form of the letter was adopted into Greek as a vowel, upsilon (which resembled its descendant 'Y' but was also the ancestor of the Roman letters 'U', 'V', and 'W'); and, with another form, as a consonant, digamma, which indicated the pronunciation /w/, as in Phoenician. Latin 'F,' despite being pronounced differently, is ultimately descended from digamma and closely resembles it in form.

「犬」and「大」are similarly unrelated, but you wouldn't be able to immediately know this without exploring a bit of history. Their shapes converged because of the way writing was stylised and streamlined.

「犬」was originally a picture of a dog.

商
甲
enter image description here
乙3853
合集3521西周
金
enter image description here
員方鼎
集成2695楚
簡
enter image description here
包2・6
　
篆
enter image description here
說文解字
　現代
楷
enter image description here

　

「大」was originally a frontal view of an adult person, indicating the meaning adult > big, large. Choosing samples from roughly the same location and period in time, the comparable development looks like

商
甲
enter image description here
甲387
合集22421西周
金
enter image description here
大保方鼎
集成2158楚
簡
enter image description here
包2・2
　
篆
enter image description here
說文解字
　現代
楷
enter image description here

　

Of course, there are modern shapes containing the strokes of「大」which really did contain「大」historically, such as「因」.

商
甲
enter image description here
餘15.3
合集5651西周
金
enter image description here
蟎鼎
集成2765戰・晉
金
enter image description here
陳侯因敦
集成4649
篆
enter image description here
說文解字
　現代
楷
enter image description here

　

There are also things that originally contained「大」, but which is not recognisable in the modern script anymore, such as「達」, where「大」is squashed into a shape identical to「土」.

商
甲
enter image description here
存2011
合集27745
篆
enter image description here
說文解字
　現代
楷
enter image description here

　

「大」would have otherwise been more obvious using the oracle bone form:


篆
enter image description here
說文或體
　現代
楷
enter image description here

　

dROOOze
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    That's a great and detailed treatment of the question. It'd bear mentioning though that at least in one case, namely 鼻 bí 'hidung' a composite radical is indeed related to one of its component radicals, 自 zì 'diri sendiri'. Following your analogy with the Latin alphabet, G is indeed an intentional variant of C, so there's indeed a C inside of G; same with U, W and V, and again with J and I. – John Frazer Oct 22 '18 at 06:41
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    @JohnFrazer Indeed! My point is that we wouldn't know any of this unless we looked into the history. One letter containing the strokes of another isn't enough to establish a functional relationship. – dROOOze Oct 22 '18 at 06:44
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    Quite so. One last thing, there's a number of simple components that pop up all over the place, like 一口日大土十士㔾厶月, that were originally differentiated into several distinct forms but have become indistinguishable in modern writing, e.g. 月 is both yue 'moon' and the bound form of 肉, but sometimes 月 also serves as abbreviation for 舟 and 丹. Such syncretisms are often not followed throughout. Learners should be aware of this before jumping to conclusions. – John Frazer Oct 22 '18 at 08:55
  • I'm sorry, this analogy is nonsense. First, I cannot see any functional relation, of course, if you have no working definition for functional. Second, the exposition of the graphemes' evolution is not as illustrative as you make it out to be. The associations to Egyptian are very speculative, so wiki/Phoenician_alphabet lists "window, feather, pen" for the apocryphic meaning of He, for example. Greek Di-Gamma seems to have much to do with the Greek letter Gamma (Γ), whereas double Yaw looks closer to, well, double-u, which was occasionally represented by di-gamma in various rotations. – vectory Oct 27 '19 at 10:32
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    @vectory perhaps take the time to learn how Chinese characters work, before you accuse me of not having a working definition for functional. I've already drawn the relation between characters and Egyptian Hieroglyphs elsewhere. Your comment is nonsense. – dROOOze Oct 27 '19 at 10:35
  • Oh no, don't give me the "no it's you" routine. Chinese characters don't work for me and never will; that has close to no bearing on matters of the alphabet. Although, it's not your argument that is flawed, but the premisses and thus the conclusion. Convergence is very much a functional process. – vectory Oct 27 '19 at 11:02
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    @vectory I'm not sure why you're coming on to a forum of a language which uses a logographic script without knowing how it works, yet somehow state with enough certainty that my premise is flawed. I'm sure you'll agree that, if the corollary were to happen, where someone without knowledge of an alphabet goes on to a forum of a language where an alphabet is used yet make statements such as yours, that person would appear quite silly. – dROOOze Oct 27 '19 at 11:07
  • I came here because you posted a link over at https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/28914/if-there-is-a-pattern-to-chinese-characters and added to JohnFrazer's argument above. I only regret to have chosen an offensive language: I didn't mean to attack you personally.Frankly, I signaled that this is not open for discussion, maybe because it's silly. I am on the edge about it because comparing nominally unrelated languages makes anyone nervous; just cp E, 羽毛, Gardiner sign M17 "y" and feather or 鼻, Egy fn "nose", Eng find, Lat legare, lego … it's too complicated to explain – vectory Oct 27 '19 at 12:20
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    @vectory Ah, in that case, I agree that the purpose of what I wrote here was not incredibly clear. To clarify, this answer was not trying to draw a functional relation between Chinese logography and English writing, but to impress onto readers not to compare glyphs or characters in their modern form, and that if any relation between glyphs or characters were present, only the ancient forms are to be compared. "This" in general is not up for discussion, because StackExchange policy and the Q&A format here discourages discussion - on another site, our exchange might have been more amicable. – dROOOze Oct 27 '19 at 12:36
  • "only the ancient forms are to be compared" is known as the etymological falacy. – vectory Oct 27 '19 at 13:06
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    @vectory That is not what the etymological fallacy means. The EF is where the modern form of a word is stated to be similar to its historical form. Firstly, I did not talk about meanings of words (this is a paleography comparison, that is, of shapes). Secondly, I did not talk about the relation between a modern form and an ancient form, but that two modern forms cannot be used for demonstration of a relation, and only their ancient forms can be used for a demonstration of a relation. – dROOOze Oct 27 '19 at 13:11
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    To be honest, I think you lack some basic concepts in logographic writing systems and paleography, and a discussion here won't be fruitful. – dROOOze Oct 27 '19 at 13:15
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You're right and not missing anything, 犬 quan 'dog' is written as 大 da 'big' plus 丶 zhu/dian 'dot'. There are more examples like that, for example, 金 jin 'gold' contains 人 ren 'person' and 王 wang 'king', and 食 shi 'food' also has 人 ren 'person' in it. However, no published dictionary that I know of will list 犬 under 大, or 金 under 人 or 王; in that sense, 犬 does not 'have 大 as its radical'.

Keep in mind that radicals are a fairly modern and post-hoc invention; learners frequently believe that 'X has radical Y' has some kind of deep meaning. In fact, that only means that 'in this dictionary, X is listed in the group labeled Y', and the same character may be listed under another radical in the next dictionary. This is also borne out by the Chinese word for 'radical', which is 部首 bushou, literally, 'chapter heading' or 'section leader'.

Also learners tend to believe that all Chinese characters are completely decomposable into the 214 radicals as listed in the famous Kangxi dictionary. This is not true; many characters have parts that are not on that list.

Update This discussion has some pretty good insights and points to keep in mind when learning about radicals: How to differentiate "radical plus 0 strokes" characters?

John Frazer
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