Need help with an extra weird kanji or maybe hanzi?

Hello,

Yesterday I was reading my favourite Iron Fist comic about the immortal weapons. This comic is usually throwing kanjis in to be more exciting. Now there was this character named Fat Cobra, who have a weird kanji, i don’t know perhaps it’s not even in japanese just only in chinese. The matter is I can’t look it up it’s so weird, I tried to find it by radicals, with no success, I tried to draw it with no success it’s impossible. I don’t how other method exist to find a character in a dictionary, and don’t know how many strokes it is. Ok, I dragged the image here. Please help me find it if it is exist in japanese and what it is? Thank you.

It’s an older version of turtle. See

edit: oh, and the reason you had no luck in your search is probably because it, like the simplified turtle, is a radical.

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That’s a radical!? It’s 18 strokes!

Eh, you can’t say it’s a radical when it’s the whole character. It is indeed a radical, but in this context it’s a kanji.

Oh, I misunderstood. What makes a radical a radical, then?

Some long dead dictionary guy couldn’t figure out a way to break it down further.

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Relevant article:

These are the traditional radicals used to sort Chinese hanzi, and by extension kanji. They were the set used in a famous dictionary to classify characters.

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Radicals are parts of kanji. In strict terms there is only one radical per kanji (the rest are components), but in loose terms radicals are the 214 characters with which you build kanji. The kanji 龜 is made with the radical 龜. But yeah, it’s a radical in some contexts, what I meant was that it’s not a radical when used as a kanji.

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Right, yes. I understand this. I just didn’t expect a radical to be so large. I find it hard to believe the Chinese would design a system that would classify an 18 stroke kanji as a radical. I am going to imagine that this is just a matter of a system being lost to time, or someone trying to apply a modern understanding to an old system.

It is indeed one of the largest radicals.

I used to practice writing radicals, too; on Anki.
Kanji Radical (Primitive)
RTK Primitives + Kanji Radicals Deck

This font is essential.
Kanji stroke order font v4.001

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Thank you for you replies. I’m just curious, that how you indentify in this kanji, that you must search the turtle radical??? I tried to see a radical in it, but i could’nt identify in this kanji the turtle radical because it’s not resemble. How you figured it out? Practice? Years?

I found it simply by searching for the only ‘radical’ I could identify (‘enclosure’ on WK) and then scrolling down to the kanji containing it with the most strokes. I saw this kanji 龝 straight away, realised that the target kanji was a few strokes less and so found it within a few seconds.

You can also search google for the image. In Chrome at least, just right click the image a select that option. :smile:

I already knew the kanji, learned both with Anki ¯_(ツ)_/¯

You know, it looks a bit like a guy wearing sunglasses, a jaunty hat, and a tail about to stab me with two pitchforks.

Don’t worry too much. Just remember the Kanji.

The other ones worth remembering are 黽 (frog), 鼠 (rat), 龍 (dragon).

The largest one is 龠 (flute), but I haven’t seen this one IRL before.

However, I don’t know this Kanji, yet (龝)… :joy:

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Oh, so turtle is a frog with a hat and pitchforks.

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