What are the differences between these two radicals? What is etymology? Both represent same character or different?
⻖yì mound, abundant R170 ⻏ fú city R163
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2Radicals are dictionary section headers and have very little, if anything, to do with glyph origins or etymology. – dROOOze Apr 5 at 21:34
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左阜右邑(lit. left fu right yi) is a useful mnemonic to remind learners of Chinese that they are different radicals despite graphical similarity.Usually (but not always, see 5.)
阜and邑(the 'ear') are the semantic component of the compound.An example of
阜(mound; mountain) as the semantic component: the character陳/陣originally means 'an array' (of soldiers in the battlefield).Examples of
邑(district; city) as the semantic component:邯鄲(Handan city, see the idiom邯鄲學步),鄭(the Zheng state during the Zhou dynasty),邦(city).But this is NOT always true. In
鄭, for instance, there is no connection between its original meaning (a state) and its modern meanings (e.g.鄭重'solemn'). There may have been phonetic loan, which abolishes the semantic relevance of邑. The same goes for邪(evil) – we only know based on character composition that its original meaning could have well been the name of a place (hypothesised to be 琅邪), but that place should in no ways be connected with evilness.
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Thanks Parker. your explanation for 邪 is great with all exceptional words. I was learning the idiom “天真无邪 tiānzhēn-wúxié (of children) innocent and artless” . 无邪 not evil is clear. 天真 has 3 meanings innocent, art less, naive. I remembered this idiom some how few things not clear like how 天真 become art less? 无邪 Not evil is nearest to Innocent in this idiom? Can you also share your thoughts on this? (It might be separate question, but let me know if you want to add me as a separate question.thanks) – user27485 Apr 6 at 2:19
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1@user27485 This is a separate question and you may benefit from other's answers. You can raise a new question if you aren't satisfied with my following comment. // 'Artless' seems to be a synonym of 'innocent' here, and
天真definitely is not related to its literal meaning. For simplicity, you may choose to remember that天真can be used in a positive light (褒義) - as in小朋友天真無邪('Children are innocent / pure'), where天真and無邪are complementary; but also in a negative light (貶義) - as in你太天真了('You're too naive'). – L Parker Apr 6 at 5:57 -
1左阜右邑 is nice! It is one of the sort of things I was asking about in chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/31204/… – goPlayerJuggler Apr 9 at 10:23
I highly advise against understanding Chinese characters in terms of radicals. The word radical (部首) is a specialised term that is only relevant to Chinese Character dictionaries, which organise Chinese characters under section (部) headers (首).
Chinese characters are actually just references to morphemes, and each Chinese character can simply be thought of as being made up from one or more morpheme hints.
You may find the following two Q/A threads helpful:
- Besides the radical, what meaning does the rest of a Chinese character have (especially when it was originally created)?
- What does 尔 really mean?
The two completely different characters which now commonly both look like 「阝」 when found in other characters are 「邑」 and 「阜」. As part of other characters, their shapes can be traced to 「阝」 like in the following table:
| 時期 | 「邑」 | 「阜」 |
|---|---|---|
| 商 | 甲 福36 合集7322 |
甲 菁3.1 合集10405 |
| 西周 | 金 臣卿簋 集成3948 |
金 | 楷 農卣 集成5424 |
| 春秋 | 金 | 楷 郙王劍 集成11611 |
金 | 楷 敶伯元匜 集成10267 |
| 戰國 | 楚・帛 2.2 子彈庫帛書丙篇 |
楚・簡 | 楷  40 荊門包山竹簡 |
楷 |
楷 |
Notice how both 「邑」 and 「阜」 occurred on either the left or right side of a character;* the modern convention of interpreting 「阝」 on the left as 「阜」 and on the right as 「邑」 is only a convenient disambiguation mnemonic after both shapes have merged into the shape of 「阝」 as part of other characters; there was no such rule in earlier forms of characters.
Individually, of course, they still exist as distinct shapes, as demonstrated in the table below.
「邑」 originally depicted a kneeling person 「卩」 outside of city walls 「丁」†, indicating the meaning town, city, settlement. It occurs in many characters to do with these meanings, for example:
- 「都」 (capital city)
- 「鄰」 (neighbour)
- 「邦」 (city-state > nation)
- 「郵」 (postal system)
「阜」 originally depicted something like a row of rocks 「石」, and is commonly used to denote characters to do with hills/mountains and rows/arrays. For example,
- 「陵」 (large hill > burial place)
- 「陰」／「陽」 (north/south side of mountains)
- 「隊」 (team, group, from an array of people)
- 「陣」 (battle formation; from an array war chariots 「車」).
Footnotes
*「邑」 can even occur on the bottom of a character; see e.g. the glyph evolution table of 「巷」. † City walls is now written as 「城」 (Baxter-Sagart OC: /*[d]eŋ/). The meaning fourth heavenly stem (/*tˤeŋ/) is a phonetic loan.
References:
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“I highly advise against understanding Chinese characters in terms of radicals” 👍 well, it’s really 曲高和寡 lah 😼 i think that, even in 20 years time, only a handful of users would understand your advice 😿 – 水巷孑蠻 Apr 6 at 9:31
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I just think we should learn to understand the writing and its relation to the language correctly, otherwise people will continually believe absolutely wrong and false things like “Simplified Chinese is easier than Traditional Chinese”, when in fact the opposite is true. – dROOOze Apr 6 at 9:53
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I learnt the word bù today, I already have pèi in my flash card. 部 bù part, section, ministry, department 陪 péi accompany ; 咅 pǒu to spit out, pooh, pah ; how to understand this? You may be correct that we should understand correctly, but I understood from earlier replies that the radical is same but depends on placement the meaning changes – user27485 Apr 7 at 4:19
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1@user27485 I'll emphasise again to not think of those in terms of radicals. Chinese SE welcomes questions on glyph-origin, so feel free to ask new questions for any character you have queries on (but make sure that there isn't an existing question that's already been asked, of course). – dROOOze Apr 7 at 4:29
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1@user27485 dROOOze is right; you should be mindful whether you are over-analysing things based on just radicals. They are convenient (say when you’re looking up the dictionary) but not necessarily etymologically valid (or conducive to your learning). – L Parker Apr 7 at 4:43
阜/ 阝 (Radical 170) - meaning: "mound" or "dam" - pinyin: /fu4/
邑/ 阝 (Radical 163) - meaning: "city" - pinyin: /yi4/
阝 is a character used in Kangxi writing which serves as the combining form of two distinct radicals, distinguished by whether it is on the left or right of a character. It is the combining form of Radical 170 (阜) when used on the left of a character, as in 阪, and of Radical 163 (邑) when used on the right of a character, as in 部.
The two radicals 阜(170) and 邑(163) are simplified into the same form 阝(170; 163). The only difference is whether it is on the left or right of a character.
When 阝 is on the left of a character (e.g. 阪, 陳, 陣) it is Radical 170
When 阝 is on the right of a character (e.g. 部, 邵, 郡) it is Radical 163
