Talk:Radical 3

“The only stroke in radical one”
Why does the article say “The only stroke in radical one” (my emphasis), when it's about radical 3? (This was added by H2NCH2COOH in one of these edits.) ◅ Sebastian 05:27, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * My bad. It's because I copied it from Radical 1 without changing. H2NCH2COOH (Talk) 12:09, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Name, pronunciation, and 通称
What is this radical called? The infobox has “cn=點/点 diǎn”, but “pny=zhǔ”. One possible explanation for this discrepancy could be ① that “點/点 diǎn” is the name of the radical, while “zhǔ "dot"”, as suggested by the table in, is the name of “丶”, regarded as a character. Since this talk page says the article contains a translation from ja.wikipedia, i looked at that article, which contains both names, too, and suggests to me a different explanation: ② since “点” (of which the preceding, and referenced, “てん” is a Japanese pronunciation) is listed under “通称” there, i can imagine that “点” is just the common, or prosaic, name, while “zhǔ” (presumably written “主” - but that woudn't mean “dot”, as the table of derived characters says) is some kind of an official name. In conclusion, whatever the purpose of this distinction, it should be clarified, used consistently, and we would need a reference for it. ◅ Sebastian 06:13, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * The first explanation is correct. More precisely, zhǔ is the pronunciation of 丶 as a(n) (ancient) Chinese character. H2NCH2COOH (Talk) 12:14, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Upon further consideration, i found a third explanation: ③ Possibly, “diǎn” and “zhǔ” could refer to two different forms of this radical. At first glance, one might think so since there are two different Unicode code points: this one (U+4E36) and “U+2F02 ⼂ KANGXI RADICAL DOT” (which this article should mention, too). However, as i understand it, this is only a consequence of the duplication of these characters in the Kangxi Radicals (Unicode block), as nicely explained in the lede of that article. So, this reinforces explanation ①. In other words, the character “丶=zhǔ” (which i might call, extrapolating from Wieger, Chinese Characters, L.83D, a ‘ruler without standing’) was made up at some time to keep up that distinction. If that is so, does anyone know if the same phenomenon exists for the rest of the Kangxi table? E.g. does ‘⼥’ have a different name when intended as a radical? ◅ Sebastian 08:31, 9 August 2023 (UTC)