language-obsession:The 月 and 肉 RadicalsOne time, I saw a post on Tumblr about the development of the

language-obsession:The 月 and 肉 RadicalsOne time, I saw a post on Tumblr about the development of the character 肉 (ruò) “meat” (Image 1) and it looked eerily similar to the development of 月 (yuè) “moon” (Image 2), both of which can be seen above. Over time, they eventually split to become two separate characters, but if you look at the Seal Script form (篆文 zhuànwén), they are almost identical:↳ This is the Seal Script form for 月 (moon radical)↳ This is the Seal Script form for 肉 (meat radical)The only difference is the two diagonal strokes in both characters. In 肉, it’s written with two slightly curved strokes. This isn’t always very apparent when it is used as a radical, because the radical gets squished, and the two curved strokes look almost identical to the moon radical.Why is this significant? There were some words that were mistakenly transcribed as having the 月 radical in the Clerical Script (隸書 lìshū). This is why many words that have to do with the body contain the 月 radical (ie: 肝, 腸, 胃, 腳, 臟, 肺, 腦). There is no distinction between moon and meat radicals in Simplified Chinese, but in modern Traditional Chinese (especially in Taiwan), words relevant to body parts are often distinguished by using the ⺼ radical, which is called 提肉旁. This gets tricky though, because on the computer, there is often no distinction (depending on font), in which case the moon radical is used.Take the word 肝 (gān) “liver” for example. In the Seal Script, it looked like this:We can see that it in fact does look very very similar to the moon radical. In the Clerical Script, it was written as follows:In Simplified Chinese and on the computer, it is written as 肝. In Traditional Chinese writing, you may see it as ⺼干 (written as one character obviously). There’s a very small difference, but here we can still see remnants of the meat radical.Another example is 有 (yǒu) “to have”, which was actually supposed to be an image of a hand (手) holding a piece of meat (肉), meaning this character used to be written with the 肉 (meat) radical.In the Seal Script:In the Clerical Script:Once again, the moon radical is used in the Clerical script, and this continued to form the modern day word, 有.Source: (部首) (篆書) (隸書) (隸變) (Vividict)Other Radicals that Evolved into 月As an interesting note, the moon radical 月 also represents three other radicals:贝 (ie: in older writing, 朋 (péng) “friend” was written as two 贝 radicals)舟 (ie: 前 (qián) “front, ahead, preceding” has an older variant: 歬, which contains the 舟 radical)丹 (ie: 青 (qīng) “blue/green” can also be written as 靑, in which the 丹 radical can be clearly seen)Source: (link)The阝RadicalOn a related note, I wanted to discuss the 阝 radical, commonly known as the 耳刀旁 (”ear knife radical”). Etymologically, it is in fact split into two separate radicals, but they are exactly the same shape in their modern form.左耳刀由 “阜” (fù) 字變形而來。“阜”字本義為土山，故從左耳刀的字，本義多與山地、地形相關，如 “陵”、“陡”、“險”、“陸”、“陰”、“陽” 等。右耳刀由 “邑” (yì) 字變形而來，“邑”字與城市有關，故從右耳刀的字，本義多與城鎮、地名相關，如 “都”、“郊”、“邦”、“郡”、“郭”、“鄭” 等。Translation: “The left ear radical transformed out of the character “阜” (fù). The character “阜” means a mound, or hills/mountains. Hence, the left ear radical originally referred to mountainous regions or hilly areas, and words with this radical were related to topography, like “hill/mound”, “steep”, “a narrow pass, dangerous”, “land, continent”, “yin, the moon, shade”, “yang, the sun, south of a hill”, etc.The right ear radical transformed out of the character “邑” (yì). 邑 is related to cities and towns, so the right ear radical originally had to do with towns/cities, as well as place names. ie: “capital city”, “suburbs”, “nation/state”, “prefecture”, “outer wall of a city”, “Zheng (one of the Warring States)”, etc. Let’s look at how the two radicals looked historically and how they developed to form the modern day radical 阝.左耳刀旁 - 阜 (fù) RadicalThis is what the 阜 radical looked like in the Oracle Bone Script, the Bronze Transcriptions, and the Seal Script respectively:In the Oracle Bone Script, the 阜 character was supposed to represent the rocky cliff edges found in ancient Chinese paintings, which is why this radical is often associated with words relating to topography and mountains. As the radical developed, it became rounder, bearing more resemblance to the present day 阝 radical.The character 防 in Seal Script:The character 防 in Clerical Script:Eventually, in order to increase writing speed (which was the goal of the Clerical Script), I assume the number of loops was reduced to two, and the radical was reduced to just two strokes, forming the modern day 阝radical.右耳刀旁 - 邑 (yì) RadicalThis is what the 邑 radical looked like in the Seal Script:The 邑 radical is actually made up of two parts: the top part (囗 wéi - meaning “enclosure”) and the bottom part, which is supposed to represent a kneeling person, symbolizing the population. This is why the 邑 radical is associated with cities, towns, and place names.Below, we have the Seal Script form of the word 部 (bù) “section, unit, department”:In the Clerical Script, it looked like this:Once again, the stroke order was simplified in the Clerical Script, shortening the number of strokes to two, and forming an identical looking radical: 阝.As another interesting side note: For those of you who do know Chinese, you might have also seen the character 陪 (which just looks like a mirror image of 部). Referring to everything we discussed up there, 陪 contains the 阜 radical, which we can analyze in its Seal Script form. Once again, we see the 阜 radical, which refers to mountains and hills. The word 陪 (péi) “to accompany” originally meant “two mountains standing side by side (and juxtaposed)”. The 咅 on the right was a phonetic element, which is itself found in the word 倍, meaning “double, twice as much”. Eventually, its meaning was extended, which is why it morphed into the modern definition of “keeping sb. company”. In the Clerical Script:Again, the 阜 radical was reduced to just 阝in the Clerical Script.If you ask most Chinese people, they will probably see both the right and left side ear radical as the same radical, but etymologically, both radicals had a drastically different historical development, and mean completely different things.Source: (阝偏旁) -- source link

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