Chinese radicals are elements or components used when writing Chinese characters. These elements are used to indicate the meaning and pronunciation of a character, and function as ideograms that identify the semantics of the characters. They are mostly autonomous characters that have their own meaning and are combined with other characters to build new meanings.

Chinese radicals are divided into six categories based on their position in the character: top, bottom, left, right, center, and full. Most Chinese characters have a radical that indicates their meaning, though there may be exceptions.

For example, the Chinese radical 女 [nǚ] means “woman”. If you spot that radical in another character, it usually means the character is related to women in some way. For instance, the Chinese word for "mom" is 妈妈 [māma]. Sounds familiar? That's right. The 女 [nǚ] radical is there to give you a clue about the meaning of those characters.

However, this is not always the case. Sometimes characters include radicals that have absolutely nothing to do with the meaning of the word. In fact, sometimes radicals can represent the pronunciation of the character rather than alluding to its meaning. For instance, the radical 乙 [yǐ] means “second position”, and the word 艺 [yì] means “skill”. "Second position" has nothing to do with "skill", but the radical gives you a clue about how it is pronounced!

It should be noticed that knowledge of Chinese radicals is important for learning and understanding the Chinese language. Radicals help identify the graphic image and the meaning of characters, making reading and language learning easier. If you encounter a character you don't know, you can evaluate its structure and determine its possible meaning by examining the radical.

Another benefit of knowing radicals is that characters can be classified by the radical, which can aid in memorizing and learning characters more effectively.

Once said that, radicals are not always reliable, so proceed with caution. Radicals can be helpful, but they cannot be relied upon 100% of the time!