hedwards 72 Report post Posted November 12, 2014 That's good to know. I always struggle a bit with the balance between doing things correctly and doing the things that I have time for. Unfortunately, they're not always the same thing and sometimes doing it correctly is impossible without access to a good set of references. I'd expect this to be a rather monumental undertaking, especially if one is doing research rather than relying upon what radicals appear to be present. I know that there's at least a few that are identical in terms of the strokes, but have completely different origins, different meanings and ideally shouldn't be confused with each other. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
889 1,751 Report post Posted November 12, 2014 As said, Wenlin is very good on components. Not only does it break down each character into components, but you can backward search as well; that is you can take any character and find what other characters use it as a component. You're not limited to radicals, as in many indexing systems. You can also find all words and phrases using a particular character. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
li3wei1 440 Report post Posted November 12, 2014 www.archchinese.com does that too, and it's free. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
889 1,751 Report post Posted November 12, 2014 Yes, but you get what you pay for.Let's use the character 曾 as an example.Archchinese doesn't break that character into components. Wenlin gives me four searchable components for it.Archchinese gives me nine characters that include 曾 as a component. Wenlin gives me over sixty.Archchinese gives me eleven words with 曾. Wenlin gives me twenty-seven words and expressions. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites