New radical suggestion: 賁 “Fun”

This is the right half of 墳 (Tomb, lv.50), 噴 (Erupt, lv.52) and 憤 (Resent, lv.54).

All of these are currently broken down as: “(blank) + Cross + Flowers + Shellfish”, which makes the mnemonics a bit heavy.

In each of these kanji, 賁 is a phonetic element contributing the on’yomi ふん. So I think it would make sense to make it a radical called “Fun”.

  • A tomb 墳 is the place in the dirt where you go when you’ve had your fun.
  • Your mouth might erupt 噴 with laughter when you’re having fun.
  • You feel resentment 憤 in your soul when someone makes fun of you.

賁 is actually a hyōgai kanji that actually means “decorate”. It doesn’t seem to be used in Japanese, but Wiktionary says it’s used plenty in Traditional Chinese.

One consideration is that teaching this radical in level 50 (where 墳 shows up) would make it a slow level. Currently 32/35 kanji are fast there, but if 墳 becomes slow, it’d be 31/35, which falls just under 90%. I don’t think that’s an issue, but some others might think so. What do you think?

(One solution is to simply teach the radical in level 49, but not teach any kanji that use it immediately. Is there a precedent for that?)

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It sounds like a good suggestion to me.

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The hills radical immediately comes to mind…

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I send them a lot of emails with typo fixes and small suggestions. But if it’s something more substantial like this, I like to check how the community feels about it (and then I’ll email them linking to the thread).

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This sounds like a good way to do it. :+1:

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Sorry for reviving an old thread, but I wanted to make a note that we’ve since mentioned the phonetic association with 賁 in the reading mnemonic of each relevant kanji. In other words, the reading mnemonics now mentions fun (ふん)

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