I am currently studying a textbook with chapters that I am continously adding. In other words, I am adding the chapters as I go along. Now I would also like to study the Kangxi radicals and for this I have found a custom list. However, I don't know what the best way is to add these characters so that I can study them parallell to my textbook, for instance 20 radicals per textbook chapter.

In other words my question is how this custom list would show itself? Would it only start presenting the radicals when I have finished studying all of the textbook chapters or would it present the radicals parallell to my textbook studies? My issue is that I don't want to add the list and have to study all 214 radicals before I can go on to the next chapter in the book.

Hope my question makes sense someone ;)

Best wishes,
Yagebu

It does. Words will be added from both list. It will alter between the lists so you will get equally many words from each list. If you like to control how many you get from each list you can change to manually add new words. If you pause one list and click to manually add you can control how many words from each list you add. I would say to study the radicals helps a lot when learning new words. Since you will recognize them in new words and get more understanding about the character from them it will speed up your process. In fact it gets faster over time to learn new characters since you can use your backlog of characters when recognizing new ones. I have checked some of my old stats and I learn new character in almost half the time now compared when I started. This is due to many factors such as the brain actually get more used to store this sort of data but the radical I am sure of helps med a lot.

谢谢！I tried it now and it works like a charm, I just didnt dare to do it before because I was afraid it could mess something up. Thanks!

My reasoning is the same as yours, that it will aid me in my ability to memorise characters. Btw, is there any point in memorising the number of the radical?

I do not care about the radical number at all. It once had a meaning since you could look up characters based on that in dictionaries. That you still can do but there are other more efficient ways. The numbers where based on the order they appeared in the list. That order where based on the stroke count in the radical it self. Now when we have simplified radicals that is sometimes different. Take the radical for dragon e.g. The simplified radical still do have the same radical number but it has far less strokes today. Traditional 龍 and simplified 龙. Both have number 212 in the kangxi radical list. There are however also other radical list derived that sometimes are based on the simplified versions etc. The radical number is however in most cases referring to the Kangxi version and the traditional forms. Fare more important to know is the meaning of the radical so spend the time on that instead is my opinion. I can't remember that i ever have used the radical number for anything. In both on and off line dictionaries there are a radical list (sorted based on stroke count) with all the 214 radicals that can be used to look up characters. To learn the numbers of those is like learning the page number where a word appear in "The lord of the rings". My father in law on the other hand is actually using those numbers when typing in Chinese since he can't pinyin. I can just say that his way is slow, no one else understand the system and very, very old school.

Why make it any more difficult than it already is I suppose, although I have heard that the correct way is to learn the numbers and most scholars seem to do e.g. our teacher often refers to the numbers. Perhaps it is a bit quicker to search by numbers but I am generally a proponent of KISS (keep it simple stupid) and I have no problem searching by numbers of strokes instead as you say.

Speaking of looking up characters in the KangXi dictionary. If I know all the KangXi radicals and I come across a character that only has one KangXi radical in it, does that mean that I will definately find this character under this radical? And what if there is a character with two KangXi radicals, will I always find it under both or can it be either of them?

Btw also, what's your opinion on using electronic dictionaries, or even a smartphone like Iphone to look up characters and words?

Btw, now I know dragon 龙 (long2) since it is really similar to 尤 (you2) which means especially. Thanks!

@yagebum This is where it get difficult:-) any character has a radical yes but character can also be any combination of "radical" elements. Only one of those is THE radical for that character. It is not always 100% clear what part is the radical then. It is not even sure that the radical do tell you anything about the meaning of the character. Sometimes the character have been undergoing so many changes during history that the meaning get lost. There are a lot of variations here. But most of the frequently used characters is easy to recognize this way. To look up an character in this style of dictionaries you identify your radical in the index. If it only is one radical in the character it is easy, then you get the page number to the definition. More likely there are more parts in the character and then you need to count the remaining strokes in the character and check in the list for the pages where those characters are. In some dictionaries you can find the character on any part of the character but in most you need to know the true radical. There are others where you count all the strokes etc. A much easier way is to use an electronic dictionary. Most of them comes today with stroke input like Skritter. Then you do not even need to know the radical or any number. I use Pleco for all my dictionary references. They also have a new nice feature now where you can use the camera in the phone and OCR the character and get it translated. Actually very cool. Finally some good use of the camera. Other on line versions that have stroke input are e.g. yellow bridge, MDBG and Nciku.

Good explanation! The camera translator sounds like a super convenient way if you're out and about and don't have time to look things up. I know Iphone has stroke input but I'd like to know if you can download some sort of app which gives it this feature as well.

Looking up characters in the traditional way however can be quite rewarding as you force youself to look at other characters with the same elements. I have learnt quite a few this way actually. Also I think one gets a better understanding of how the language is constructed.

Speaking of radicals I am also wondering if you know if there is a list of the most common phonetics. I wasn't able to find one myself. Also, apparently it is supposed to be possible with the use of a traditional dictionary to look up the phonetics in any characters. That is assuming it has a phonetic. Do you know how to do this MandarinBoy and if so would you care to teach me this too? :)

For the most common phonetics you can use a list compiled by Goulnik (Frequent contributor at Chinesepod)
http://goulnik.com/chinese/phonetics/
As for looking up based on phonetics that is usually rather simple. Pinyin is just the latest version of Phonetic transcription of Chinese. There have been many different such systems over the year. Many dictionaries do have the characters in order of the transcription. Today pinyin ordered dictionaries are very common. Most of them are listed in pinyin order and for each entry they are ordered based on the total number of strokes in the character from small to large number. Rather simple. There are many apps with stroke order look up features. I only use Pleco (paid app)but there are more. You can also use the on line on your phone, such as NCIKU. I totally agree that you can find many nice characters when you are looking in an dictionary but you might also end up with a a lot of rarely used character. Before learning new characters I like to check them against NCIKU for example sentences. If there are no or they are weird it is no meaning to use them. The same you can do in Chinesepod, lots of good sentences. In many dictionaries you can also have the frequency for a word. e.g. yellow bridge where you can se the character composition with radical and phonetics as well as frequency. It is a good idea to use several sources. After all. There are more than 50.000 (65.000) characters but only maybe 6-8 000 are in some degree regular use. Do not waist time on rarely used characters. If you find good example sentences, you might fin it useful to save them in a tool such as Anki. It is all about getting context. I try to place my new words in sentences to reinforce the learning. That also give me more fluent conversations. If you have not seen this before http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/ i suggest you do so. That is in fact an effective way of learning Chinese as well. I am not that radical my self but many of the ideas is very useful. I try to use my Chinese on my daily life. Uggly page but the ideas is well worth trying.

@Yagebu Some time ago, Rachael published three lists that focus on commonly-used phonetic elements. You can find it here:

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/customlists/search?query=rgwatwormhill+

s/find it/find them/g

@MandarinBoy. Actually when I meant looking up phonetics I meant seeing if a character has a phonetic element or not. The way I know how to do this is by looking up the character and if there is an element in that character that is reoccuring several times under the same pinyin header then it ought to be the phonetic in that word. However, I dont know if this is a good way or not and perhaps there is a better way. As for checking new words with NCIKU, I think its a good idea to look at the frequency of the word that I am thinking of learning. So far I haven't been that organised, probably because I am new to chinese and eager to learn everything I read. In the long run however this is the way to do it because learning everything is not plausible with limited amounts of time. However, do you think I should pay much attention to the example sentences in skritter? I am hoping that the context will show itself when I go to China. All too often I seem to hear about people trying to learn a language from a book and when they finally get to speak to the natives they realise that what they have learnt is not the way people actually say things. My strategy therefore is to simply cram as many words into my brain as possible before I go to China and fully immerse myself. But all in the spirit of all Japanese all the time I don't think its a bad idea to read a Chinese newspaper on daily basis, watch Chinese television (e.g. my preference would be CCTV). Although this might still be a bit too advanced for my level.

@jww1066. Precisely what I was looking for! I've certainly got my work cut out for me now. The lists that I am currently studying are Colloquial Chinese (textbook), KangXi radicals and now this custom list of yours. However, I don't think I can go wrong with these and it should hopefully be worth the effort. Again, thanks for the list!

@MandarinBoy. Interestingly I　tried to use NCIKU just now but I get this error message when I try to search for a word:

"Sorry,it looks like something went wrong.
You can try refreshing the page. or come back later if you still see this message.
Please contact help@nciku.com if you continue to receive this error message."

In any case, I was going to compare 那么　ａｎｄ　这么 which seem to both mean "so/in that way" according to my textbook. To see in which context both were used in I used Yellowbridge instead and there seem to be a difference, for instance 这么 can apparently also mean "how much" and 那么 can also mean "so" as in "so, when are we going?". Although for me its still quite difficult to tell them apart.