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| The classifiers, determinants or radicals (bushou 部首) of a Chinese character serve to categorize words according to their meaning and to place them into a dictionary. The advantage of a radical is that one does not have to know the pronunciation of the character. For most characters, there is no problem to be categorized. But especially characters that are not compounded of a phonetical (shengfu 聲符) and a classifying part (xingfu 形符), are not easy to be classified in such a system. For example, shall the character for "heaven" 天 be classified under "great" 大 or under "one" 一? Having a closer look at some characters, wrong attributions can easily be found, for instance the character for dao 到 "arriving" seems to be compounded a standing "knife" 刀 to the right and the character 至 as a second part. Indeed, all characters deriving the radical "knife" have the same shape. But looking at the meaning of the character, we see that in fact, the "knife" is not the radical, but the phonetical part of the character (pronounced dao), and the left part is in fact the radical 至 zhi "arriving". Some writing styles also create the problem to recognize the real radical, for example 荊 jing: is the radical the "top grass" 艸 or the "standing knife" 刀? The dictionary most accurately describing the characters and their radicals is the Late Han dictionary Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 by Xu Shen 許慎 (d. 147 AD). Xu attributed all characters to 540 radicals. Many of these radicals have only few characters depending on them (like 系 xi "binding together, connecting": 孫 sun grandson, 綿 mian brocade, 繇 yao following up), some Shuowen radicals even stand alone for themselves, like the first of terrestrial branches, 甲 jia. And one can really argue if the character 炎 yan "gleaming", consisting of two "fire" 火, is a radical for its own or rather belongs to the radical 火 huo (one fire). The system of 214 radicals came up during the late Ming dynasty, when characters like 孫 sun "grandson" were rather attributed to the radical zi 子 "son". The first dictionary using the 214 radical system was Mei Yingzu's 梅膺祚 Zihui 字彙 "Character treasure" 1615, containing more than 30.000 characters. The most famous dictionary using them is the Kangxi dictionary Kangxi zidian 康熙字典 1716. Even the reduction of radicals 540 to 214 left behind a lot of work for people wanting to be expert in knowing the radicals of all characters. Modern dictionaries therefore have created their own system of radicals, mostly according to the shape of the Chinese character. Characters like 哉 zai (an exclamation particle), 栽 zai "planting", 戴 zai "loading", 裁 cai "tailoring" can now easily be found under the radical  - what is actually the phonetical part of these characters - instead of the traditional radicals 口 kou "mouth", 木 mu "tree", 車 che "cart", or 衣 yi "clothing". 奉 feng "receiving with respect", 奏 zou "reporting to the throne", 春 chun "spring", 泰 tai "great", 秦 qin (a kind of millet), are now all headed under the radical  , while their traditional radicals are  gong "raised hands",  tao "going forward" (the 214 radical system attributes feng and zou to the radical 大 da "great"), 日 ri "sun" (the Shuowen jiezi only knows the character 萅 for "spring"), 水 shui "water", and 禾 he "grain". See also the theme simplification of characters.Some radicals have a different shape if they stand alone as a word, and as a radical:
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