<p>As @50-3 has mentioned, the 难 is the simplification of the traditional character 難. Most Chinese characters are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification#Phono-semantic_compound_characters">phono-semantic compounds (形声字)</a>, in which the radical hints at the meaning while the phonetic hints at the pronunciation. In the case of 難, the phonetic component is 堇 while the radical is 隹. In modern Chinese, the pronunciation of 堇 has diverged from 難, but their pronunciations in Old Chinese were presumably closer.</p>

<p>Why is the radical 隹, which typically refers to birds? This link gives the explanation: <a href="http://font.zenque.com/zidian/4796.html">http://font.zenque.com/zidian/4796.html</a></p>

<blockquote>
  <p>難，今单用简作难，读nán，本义指一种鸟。因其从“堇”（火焚人祭雨）取得声义，故借以表示①困难；艰难</p>
</blockquote>

<p>難 originally referred to a type of bird, but because the pronunciations coincided, the character ended up being borrowed to also refer to hardship and difficulty.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-12T02:53:03.050Z
“堇” pronounces as "jin1", refering to a kind of vegetable. It has no meaning of "火焚人祭雨" as far as I can find.
Paul Allen
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-07-26T03:34:21.883Z
@PaulAllen This one is a mystery. Both 艱 (tough clay) and 難 (some bird) are ancient because they show up in Erya: https://ctext.org/er-ya/shi-gu/zh#n37715. By present pronunciation, 堇 should be an OC homophone of 艱, not of 難. By character construction, all three should be homophones. It's possible the bird 難 was also pronounced 堇; in fact some sources hint at this. So where did the [nan] reading comes from? [nan] *is* the Sino-Tibetan lexeme. It could be a "trained reading," or, 難 is a calque character with no phonetic compound.
Nimrod
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-08T23:51:34.420Z
2014-02-08T23:51:34.420Z
Claw
<p>Actually it depends on what you mean by "radical" which can stand for both "<strong>偏旁</strong>"(pian1pang2) and "<strong>部首</strong>"(bu4shou3) in Chinese.</p>

<p>They are such ambiguous concepts that even some Chinese teacher can get confused, according to <a href="http://baike.baidu.com/view/1433394.htm#1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Baidu Baike</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>“偏旁部首”常常连在一起说，于是有些教师就认为“偏旁”和“部首”是一回事，这是一种误解。偏旁和部首，虽然有某些联系，却是两个不同的概念。</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The two concepts are different in that while "部首" <strong>only</strong> includes <strong>semantic radicals</strong> (I'm not sure if there is such a term. By <strong>semantic radical</strong> I mean "形旁" in Chinese) which is rare in Chinese characters, "偏旁" includes both semantic radicals and <strong>phonetic radicals</strong> (Again, by <strong>phonetic radical</strong> I mean "声旁" in Chinese). In other words, <strong>"部首" can be seen as part of "偏旁"</strong>. So it's OK to say that "the '偏旁' of '难' is '又'", if we consider "又" as a phonetic radical. But why shall we think so?</p>

<p>Because the <strong>semantic radicals</strong> of "难" should be "隹". </p>

<p>If we open our <a href="http://xh.5156edu.com/kx/a20737b62544c97077d.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Kangxi Dictionary</a> to study the explanation of it, we can see this:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>【說文】鳥也。本作<img src="https://i.sstatic.net/o9jlw.gif" alt="nan"></p>
</blockquote>

<p>So "难" originally means a kind of bird. Then which part of "难" stands for a "bird"? If you know the traditional form of "鸡"(chicken)—— "雞", you will find that they share the same part "<a href="http://xh.5156edu.com/html3/20735.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">隹</a>", which exatly means "birds" with short tails. Therefore, the "部首", or "semantic radical" of "难" is "隹". And of couse you can say that "the '偏旁' of '难' is '隹'", too.</p>

<p>However, the development of dictionary has subdivided "部首" into <a href="http://baike.baidu.com/view/1433394.htm#3" rel="nofollow noreferrer">"识字部首" and "检字部首"</a>. The former is actually the "部首" I explained above, while the latter is some commonly shared part of a large number of characters which helps us to look them up in dictionaries more easily. Although most of the time both are the same, they can differ from each other in some cases, as in the case of "难".</p>

<p>For example, "鸡","难","艰","邓", they all share the part of "又", so "又" is one of those "检字部首"s in the dictionary.</p>

<p>Maybe your teacher meant that you could look "难" up in the dictionay by the radical of "又".</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-12T08:19:40.063Z
2014-02-12T08:19:40.063Z
Paul Allen
<p>The most important reason is <em>to keep consistency with older dictionaries</em>. 「難」 is listed under 「隹」, so there is no reason to change that for newer dictionaries with 「难」.</p>

<p>The second most important reason is that 「又」 is not really a component of 「难」. 「又」 actually means something solid: It's a picture of a <em>hand</em> and is pronounced as <strong>yòu</strong>. Characters like 仅, 鸡, 欢, 汉, etc. don't contain 「又」, they contain an abbreviation made up of two strokes 「㇇」 and 「乀」 which is supposed to be a situational replacement for unrelated components like 堇, 奚, 雚, <a href="https://i.sstatic.net/UjuT1.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/UjuT1.png" alt="enter image description here"></a>, etc. If all characters which contain the abbreviation were listed under radical 「又」, then the 「又」 section in the dictionary would become extremely bloated.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Characters which actually contain 「又」 usually have connections in sound and/or meaning to 「又」: 友, 受, 取, 攴/攵 (牧, 教, 敲, ...), 殳 (投, 擊, 殺, ...), etc.</p>
</blockquote>

<hr>

<p>This is not a "semantic radical" or "phonetic radical" reason; there's no such thing as "semantic/phonetic" radicals, and there is no rule that dictionary radicals have to be "semantic". For example, the radical for 「錦」 is 「金」, which is its phonetic component.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-19T07:35:31.720Z
2020-01-19T07:40:58.883Z
2020-01-19T07:40:58.883Z
dROOOze
<h2>Partial answer</h2>

<p><em>To the best of my knowledge and after a little research:</em></p>

<p>Wikipedia defines a radical as:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>a graphical component of a Chinese character under which the character is traditionally listed in a Chinese dictionary.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>So saying which dictionary you're referencing would be a big help as not all are based off Kangxi radicals. But let's take a quick look at the character 难. We have two ways of breaking it down:</p>

<ol>
<li>又 + 8 <em>Strokes</em></li>
<li>隹 + 2 <em>Strokes</em></li>
</ol>

<p>Both are considered radicals and both would be valid entries in a dictionary but let's take a second to look at 難. This is the traditional variant of 难. See something missing? There is no 又 present in its traditional form but 隹 still is present so let's look at the options for classifying the traditional variant:</p>

<ol>
<li>隹 + 11 <em>Strokes</em></li>
</ol>

<p>So based off the fact you're working with simplified I wouldn't see an issue with either your dictionary's answer or your teacher's answer but the dictionary has most likely placed 难 under 隹 as that was the location for the traditional variant.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-01T23:51:32.283Z
2018-01-13T12:30:47.063Z
2018-01-13T12:30:47.063Z
50-3
<p>I am sure the radical for this character is 隹 , I can list the characters of 又 radical：
又叉及反双友収发叏叐叒叓变取受叔叕叛叟叙叚叝叞叜叠叡叢</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-20T02:04:37.710Z
This doesn't explain why 隹 is the radical. I suggest you to go through https://chinese.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer on how to provide a good answer.
deutschZuid
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-05T08:39:50.290Z
2013-11-05T08:39:50.290Z
TaraWordoor
<p>难 nan2, difficult; hard. Kangxi radical 172 隹.</p>

<p>My teacher says the radical for this character is 又 but the dictionary says clearly it's 隹.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-05T11:02:50.353Z
Are you sure that there can be only one radical and that all dictionaries use the same system of radicals?
hippietrail
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-09T01:18:00.233Z
Kangxi's system is based on traditional, un-simplified characters. As is indicated by the name, this dictionary was made around 1700s.
Joseph S WU
<etymology><simplified-characters><glyph-origin><radicals>
Why is the radical of 难 > 隹 and not 又?
# Why is the radical of 难 > 隹 and not 又?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2013-11-01)

难 nan2, difficult; hard. Kangxi radical 172 隹.

My teacher says the radical for this character is 又 but the dictionary says clearly it's 隹.

**Tags:** etymology, simplified-characters, glyph-origin, radicals

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Are you sure that there can be only one radical and that all dictionaries use the same system of radicals?  
> **username_2**: Kangxi's system is based on traditional, un-simplified characters. As is indicated by the name, this dictionary was made around 1700s.  

---

## 5 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2014-02-08. Score: 7

As @username_7 has mentioned, the 难 is the simplification of the traditional character 難. Most Chinese characters are [phono-semantic compounds (形声字)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification#Phono-semantic_compound_characters), in which the radical hints at the meaning while the phonetic hints at the pronunciation. In the case of 難, the phonetic component is 堇 while the radical is 隹. In modern Chinese, the pronunciation of 堇 has diverged from 難, but their pronunciations in Old Chinese were presumably closer.

Why is the radical 隹, which typically refers to birds? This link gives the explanation: <http://font.zenque.com/zidian/4796.html>

> 難，今单用简作难，读nán，本义指一种鸟。因其从“堇”（火焚人祭雨）取得声义，故借以表示①困难；艰难

難 originally referred to a type of bird, but because the pronunciations coincided, the character ended up being borrowed to also refer to hardship and difficulty.

> **Comments:**
> **username_4**: “堇” pronounces as "jin1", refering to a kind of vegetable. It has no meaning of "火焚人祭雨" as far as I can find.  
> **username_5**: @PaulAllen This one is a mystery. Both 艱 (tough clay) and 難 (some bird) are ancient because they show up in Erya: https://ctext.org/er-ya/shi-gu/zh#n37715. By present pronunciation, 堇 should be an OC homophone of 艱, not of 難. By character construction, all three should be homophones. It's possible the bird 難 was also pronounced 堇; in fact some sources hint at this. So where did the [nan] reading comes from? [nan] *is* the Sino-Tibetan lexeme. It could be a "trained reading," or, 難 is a calque character with no phonetic compound.  

---

### Answer by username_4 on 2014-02-12. Score: 4

Actually it depends on what you mean by "radical" which can stand for both "**偏旁**"(pian1pang2) and "**部首**"(bu4shou3) in Chinese.

They are such ambiguous concepts that even some Chinese teacher can get confused, according to [Baidu Baike](http://baike.baidu.com/view/1433394.htm#1):

> “偏旁部首”常常连在一起说，于是有些教师就认为“偏旁”和“部首”是一回事，这是一种误解。偏旁和部首，虽然有某些联系，却是两个不同的概念。

The two concepts are different in that while "部首" **only** includes **semantic radicals** (I'm not sure if there is such a term. By **semantic radical** I mean "形旁" in Chinese) which is rare in Chinese characters, "偏旁" includes both semantic radicals and **phonetic radicals** (Again, by **phonetic radical** I mean "声旁" in Chinese). In other words, **"部首" can be seen as part of "偏旁"**. So it's OK to say that "the '偏旁' of '难' is '又'", if we consider "又" as a phonetic radical. But why shall we think so?

Because the **semantic radicals** of "难" should be "隹".

If we open our [Kangxi Dictionary](http://xh.5156edu.com/kx/a20737b62544c97077d.html) to study the explanation of it, we can see this:

> 【說文】鳥也。本作![nan](https://i.sstatic.net/o9jlw.gif)

So "难" originally means a kind of bird. Then which part of "难" stands for a "bird"? If you know the traditional form of "鸡"(chicken)—— "雞", you will find that they share the same part "[隹](http://xh.5156edu.com/html3/20735.html)", which exatly means "birds" with short tails. Therefore, the "部首", or "semantic radical" of "难" is "隹". And of couse you can say that "the '偏旁' of '难' is '隹'", too.

However, the development of dictionary has subdivided "部首" into ["识字部首" and "检字部首"](http://baike.baidu.com/view/1433394.htm#3). The former is actually the "部首" I explained above, while the latter is some commonly shared part of a large number of characters which helps us to look them up in dictionaries more easily. Although most of the time both are the same, they can differ from each other in some cases, as in the case of "难".

For example, "鸡","难","艰","邓", they all share the part of "又", so "又" is one of those "检字部首"s in the dictionary.

Maybe your teacher meant that you could look "难" up in the dictionay by the radical of "又".


---

### Answer by username_6 on 2020-01-19. Score: 2

The most important reason is *to keep consistency with older dictionaries*. 「難」 is listed under 「隹」, so there is no reason to change that for newer dictionaries with 「难」.

The second most important reason is that 「又」 is not really a component of 「难」. 「又」 actually means something solid: It's a picture of a *hand* and is pronounced as **yòu**. Characters like 仅, 鸡, 欢, 汉, etc. don't contain 「又」, they contain an abbreviation made up of two strokes 「㇇」 and 「乀」 which is supposed to be a situational replacement for unrelated components like 堇, 奚, 雚, [![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/UjuT1.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/UjuT1.png), etc. If all characters which contain the abbreviation were listed under radical 「又」, then the 「又」 section in the dictionary would become extremely bloated.

> Characters which actually contain 「又」 usually have connections in sound and/or meaning to 「又」: 友, 受, 取, 攴/攵 (牧, 教, 敲, ...), 殳 (投, 擊, 殺, ...), etc.

---

This is not a "semantic radical" or "phonetic radical" reason; there's no such thing as "semantic/phonetic" radicals, and there is no rule that dictionary radicals have to be "semantic". For example, the radical for 「錦」 is 「金」, which is its phonetic component.


---

### Answer by username_7 on 2013-11-01. Score: 1

## Partial answer

*To the best of my knowledge and after a little research:*

Wikipedia defines a radical as:

> a graphical component of a Chinese character under which the character is traditionally listed in a Chinese dictionary.

So saying which dictionary you're referencing would be a big help as not all are based off Kangxi radicals. But let's take a quick look at the character 难. We have two ways of breaking it down:

1. 又 + 8 *Strokes*
2. 隹 + 2 *Strokes*

Both are considered radicals and both would be valid entries in a dictionary but let's take a second to look at 難. This is the traditional variant of 难. See something missing? There is no 又 present in its traditional form but 隹 still is present so let's look at the options for classifying the traditional variant:

1. 隹 + 11 *Strokes*

So based off the fact you're working with simplified I wouldn't see an issue with either your dictionary's answer or your teacher's answer but the dictionary has most likely placed 难 under 隹 as that was the location for the traditional variant.


---

### Answer by username_8 on 2013-11-05. Score: -2

I am sure the radical for this character is 隹 , I can list the characters of 又 radical：
又叉及反双友収发叏叐叒叓变取受叔叕叛叟叙叚叝叞叜叠叡叢

> **Comments:**
> **username_9**: This doesn't explain why 隹 is the radical. I suggest you to go through https://chinese.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer on how to provide a good answer.  

---

