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Is there a and if yes what is the maximum number of radicals that can be there in a Chinese Character?

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    One. Characters can be made up of lots of "radicals" but there will only be one that is the actual radical. For instance the character 落 has both 艹 and 氵as components but it's radical is only one: 艹.
    – Mou某 ♦
    Nov 17, 2014 at 6:45
  • @user3306356 Yes for 形声字. A 会意字 can have 2 or more “radicals". 器 for example, is a dog guarding four food containers.
    – Wang Dingwei
    Nov 17, 2014 at 7:09
  • I'm only seeing 口 as it's radical, though...
    – Mou某 ♦
    Nov 17, 2014 at 7:40
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    I do not feel qualified to answer this question since I am neither Chinese nor a professionally trained Sinologist, but I think the reason for some people think a character can have multiple radicals is that some modern dictionaries will list a character under multiple radicals to make the look up process for the dictionary user faster, like the bilingual Chinese-English version of the 新华字典. I guess I stopped using this dictionary for the very reason that the editors of it thought "laowais are stupid, we need to list characters under many radicals, otherwise they will never find them!"
    – imrek
    Nov 17, 2014 at 9:20
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    OK obviously I have confused radicals with word roots. You are both correct.
    – Wang Dingwei
    Nov 17, 2014 at 9:28

2 Answers 2

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One.

Characters can be made up of -or- contain lots of "radicals" but there will only be one that is the actual radical.

For instance the character 落 has both 艹 and 氵as components but it's radical is only one: 艹.

Characters can also have simplified & traditional radicals.

For example: 卡 has a simplified radical of: 丨 and a traditional radical: 卜 - where 丨 is obviously not a simplification of 卜. The aforementioned 落 on the other hand also has simplified and traditional radicals 艹 & 艸 --- where 艹 is just a straight up simplification of 艸.

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  • +1, I always thought of anything that wasn't the radical, even though it could be a radical, as a "component."
    – Ming
    Nov 18, 2014 at 5:49
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enter image description here

For more:

see blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_78d0d11d0100rw8b.html

and http://baike.baidu.com/view/181910.htm?fr=aladdin

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  • Good article, but not exactly what I am looking for. I am looking the maximum number of radicals inside one character. How do we know this in this article?
    – Divyansh Goenka
    Nov 17, 2014 at 6:01
  • What the OP ask is 部首, rather than 词缀
    – Victor
    Nov 21, 2014 at 16:47

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