Using Wordpress and Google Documents to study Chinese

[William]

Here is my Wordpress blog

http://rosettastonemandarin.wordpress.com/about/

I am compiling notes on Rosetta Stone Mandarin exercises

Also, I subscribe to http://www.skritter.com for $10 to practice
reading and writing Kanji Characters. I am starting off with the
RADICALS.

http://mandarin.about.com/od/writingmandarin/a/radicals.htm

Excerpt:

The earliest Chinese dictionary categorized characters according to
540 radicals. By 1615, this number of radicals had been reduced to
214, which is the system still used today for traditional characters
(used in Taiwan and Hong Kong).

Mainland China developed simplified characters in the 1950's, and this
required a revision of the radicals. There were three systems
developed which used 227, 187, and 155 radicals respectively.

Using Radicals

As elements of Chinese characters, radicals are useful when learning
how to write Chinese. Once the student knows all of the radicals, he
or she can produce any Chinese character, no matter how complex.

Radicals are also used for looking up characters in dictionaries.
Traditionally this was the only method used for classifying dictionary
entries, but many modern dictionaries supplemtent radical tables with
other systems such as phonetics and stroke count.

For dictionary entries, the radical is considered to be the most
important element of the character. It is sometimes difficult to
determine which is the radical, since it may appear at any position of
the character.