I found that many (most?) Chinese characters look like they're composed of more primitive ones, like:
做 ＝ 亻十口夂
你 ＝ 亻尔
吃 ＝ 卩乙
and so on.
I this a real phenomenon or just my European imagination?
If it is not real then why? If it is real, then what is the name of this phenomenon? I know there are "radicals", but I'm not sure all components I see belong to the set of radicals.
recent studies called them components (部件). there're 1300+ basic component:
Chinese characters were originally unique pictographic symbols depicting more or less the concept of the words they stood for. Over time as the written language evolved, many of these symbols were simplified and as they were simplified, different styles of writing and shorthand for parts of symbols became standardised.
For example, while 有 is written as combining 𠂇 + 月 the actual origin of the symbol is the combination of 𠂇 + ⺼.
As such, the components that make up a modern character may be completely unrelated to the original characters combined to create it.
E.g. while 犬 looks like 大 plus one stroke, they actually derive from independent symbols which (when simplified) have a similar appearance:
| Original character | Modern character |
|---|---|
 |
大 |
 |
犬 |
This is somewhat analogous to how e.g. woodchuck in English looks like it comes from wood + chuck, but is actually from the Algonquian word wuchak. To make a word easier to write, it is written using a common set of standardised subcomponents* shared across most words.
Notes
* Of course, as many subcomponents are themselves composed of other components, one can go further:
| Decomposed into the different... | Example |
|---|---|
| strokes | 有 ← (一 + 丿) + (一 + 一 + 丨 + 𠃌) etc |
But unless you are learning to write the characters stroke by stroke, this is about as useful as decomposing english words into the lines, circles, half circles etc that make up each letter.
It is true, here is an example
泪
This character is composed of 氵 and 目，which represent water and eye respectively, and the character means tear!
In more traditional writings, this would become more obvious. In fact, if you look at ancient writings, you will find out that Chinese origins from actual drawing of stuff around us.
Naïve visual decomposition does not work for a lot of the time, so I’ll just demonstrate some examples.
Firstly, your own:
做 is comprised of 作 and 攵. 乍 was graphically corrupted into 古, but that’s not it’s original form. 作 is in turn decomposable into 亻 and 乍.
你 is decomposable into 亻and 尔.
吃 is decomposable into 口 and 乞. 乞 is not decomposable; the way you did it is equivalent to “decomposing” the Roman letter “d” into “c” and “l”.
Next, some non-decomposable characters that look like they’re decomposable:
龍, an entire picture of a dragon
能, an entire picture of a bear
魚, an entire picture of a fish
它, an entire picture of a snake
气, a picture of streaks of clouds in the sky
Finally, some decomposable characters which look like they’re non-decomposable, or have unexpected decompositions:
之, decomposable into 止 and 一
戍, decomposable into 人 and 戈
喪, decomposable into 桑, 2x口, and 亾
