I (Marco Cimarosti) wrote:
> Tendo wrote:
> > I thought the radical was tongue, not hook.
> Nope, it is neither "tongue" nor "hook". The radical of
> U+4E82 is number 5 ("second").
[...]
> BTW, the Unicode radical of U+4E59 is derived from [...]
> the radical of the Kang Xi dictionary:
Sorry to reply to myself, but the story is not ended here.
The Kang Xi radical of U+4E82 is actually 5, but I couldn't explain to
myself why Tendo (aka 11DigitBoy) asked that question.
So I checked one of the sacred texts of sinology:
Bernhard Karlgren,
Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese,
Libraire Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, Paris, 1923
(reprint: Dover Publications, New York, 1974,
ISBN 0-486-21887-2,
Library of Congress card no. 74-75625)
This is what Karlgren says about this character (comments in <...> are mine;
comments in [...] are by the author and explain the graphical etymology; the
pronunciations given are Mandarin, Middle Chinese, and Ancient Chinese):
亂 luan lǖn luân
<亂 without last stroke> luan lǖn luân
unravel —
[<great seal glyph>: 爪 又 two hands working with 糸 silk threads hung
up on 冂 a stand].
Japanese ran; unravel, bring into order; confusion, rebellion;
confuse, mix —
[same word as last; character enlarged by hook depicting the end of
the thread].
So it seems there is in fact an etymological "hook" radical here, although
its modern shape has become identical to "second".
_ Marco
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