Radical 212
Radical 212, 龍, 龙, or 竜 meaning "dragon", is one of the two of the 214 Kangxi radicals that are composed of 16 strokes. The character arose as a stylized drawing of a Chinese dragon, and refers to a version of the dragon in each East Asian culture:
- Chinese dragon, Lóng in Chinese
- Japanese dragon, Ryū or Tatsu in Japanese
- Korean dragon, Ryong or Yong in Korean
- Vietnamese dragon, Rồng in Vietnamese
It may also refer to the Dragon as it appears in the Chinese zodiac. It is used as the symbol for Tatsu, a roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain, in California.
In the Kangxi Dictionary 14 characters are under this radical.
It occurs as a phonetic complement in some fairly common Chinese characters, for example 聾 = "deaf", which is composed of 龍 "dragon" and the "ear" 耳 radical, "a word with meaning related to ears and pronounced similarly to 龍": "dragon gives sound, ear gives meaning".Literature
- Leyi Li: “Tracing the Roots of Chinese Characters: 500 Cases”. Beijing 1993,
