Re: Chinese Character Decomposition

On Thu, Jun 12, 2003 at 01:41:36AM +0200, Henrik Theiling wrote:

> Another, more specialised question: concerning the character gong4 (in
> Mandarin) with six strokes ('to share'), radical ba1 ('eight'),
> U+5171: what is the remaining decomposition after taking away ba1?  No
> valid character remains after removing ba1.  I decomposed it as
> 'eight' + 'one' + 'grass' (bottom to top).  Would that be correct?
> (That does makes sense wrt. 'to share'.)
According to www.zhongwen.com, the character evolved from "twenty"

     |  |
    -+--+-
     |  |
     +--+

and "pairs of hands"

     |  |
    -+--+-
     |  |
    /   |

but I don't know if the historical view is relevant to decomposition.
Nevertheless, zhongwen.com is really cool.

Amanda

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