<p>I would say that the <a href="http://cjkdecomp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=cjk-decomp&amp;referringTitle=Home" rel="nofollow noreferrer">CJK Decomposition Data</a> (your first link; henceforth CJKDD) is better of the two, for most purposes. Some time ago I used the <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons%3aChinese_characters_decomposition" rel="nofollow noreferrer">character decomposition data from Wikimedia Commons</a>, and there were quite a few popular characters with missing decompositions. Now I checked a few of these characters, and all of them had decompositions in CJKDD, so it seems more complete.</p>

<p>The Wikimedia database is better than before, but still lacks decompositions of some characters, such as 齒, 風 and 龠. Moreover, some decompositions are incorrect, e.g. 辰 is shown as a component of 脈. And in general, the Wikimedia database doesn't show components that aren't separate characters. CJKDD, conversely, contains all kinds of components, including the ones that don't have their own Unicode code points.</p>

<p><a href="http://wenlin.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Wenlin</a> with its <a href="https://www.wenlin.com/cdl" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Character Description Language</a> (CDL) is another source of decomposition data that you may want to look at. Even CJKDD has inconsistent descriptions of some characters, and Wenlin seems a bit better in this regard. For example, even though  is present in the database, it is not shown as a component of 範 (範 is decomposed as <code>範:d(⺮,38298)</code>, which is in turn decomposed as <code>38298:a(車,㔾)</code>. In Wenlin, 範 is correctly decomposed into  and . Wenlin uses Unicode <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Use_Areas" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Private Use Areas</a> for encoding components that aren't separate characters.</p>

<p>On the other hand, Wenlin has its peculiarities and, for example, decomposes 齒 into  and 凵. CJKDD splits 齒 into 止 and , which seems much more natural. In the result, Wenlin doesn't see  as a component of 齒. Similarly, 曲 a sub-sub-component of 曹 in CJKDD and Wikimedia, but not in Wenlin.</p>

<p>Another difference between the databases is that CJKDD decompositions are consistently graphical. For example, 條 is decomposed as <code>條:a(39752,条)</code>, which is in turn decomposed as <code>39752:wr(亻,㇑)</code>. In Wikimedia Commons, 條 is decomposed into 攸 and 木, which has more to do with the historical development of the character and its radical (which happens to be 木), but not with its modern form. Wenlin provides both the graphical decomposition (based on the CDL data), and the list of all the sub-components that may be associated with this character (in this case: 攸亻丨条夂木). Another example: because the CJKDD decompositions are purely graphical, the upper right part of 祭 is shown as 卩. Wenlin, more correctly, shows it as a graphical variant of 又.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-28T18:03:31.433Z
2017-01-07T12:10:48.363Z
2017-01-07T12:10:48.363Z
米好 '-'
<p>I'm not an expert in CJK decomposition, but I can share some of my knowledge as a native Chinese.</p>

<p>Both decomposition are purely structural I would say. It is suitable for computer processing (input and recognition). We also use this way to look up a character in dictionary (99% of it actually, there are exceptions).</p>

<p>So in a broad sense they are compatible. But just as different Chinese dictionaries may put the same character under different <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_%28Chinese_character%29" rel="nofollow">radicals</a> (部首 bùshǒu), there is no guarantee of consistency and mostly depends on the editor of the classification. Nevertheless these discrepancies should be treated as exceptions rather than norm.</p>

<p>Reference on structural decomposition: <a href="http://chinesenotes.com/chinese_fonts_structure.php" rel="nofollow">http://chinesenotes.com/chinese_fonts_structure.php</a></p>

<h3>More on CJK characters</h3>

<p>Chinese character decomposition <strong><em>as a study</em></strong> is much more than that. None of the above decomposition referred to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification" rel="nofollow">六書 liùshū</a>, the six way of Chinese character formation. I highly recommend you look into it if you are interested in Chinese characters.</p>

<p>Japanese has its own fixed set of phonetic characters (仮名 kana) and Chinese characters (漢字 kanji). It uses the rules in 六書 liùshū (mostly 會意 huìyì) to generate many kanji that is only used in Japanese and only have Japanese articulation.</p>

<p>Korean characters (hangul) are actually shapes of consonants and vowels packed in a square  so it is also a fixed set of phonetic characters.</p>

<p>p.s. maybe a bit off-topic, sorry :-P</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-08-12T05:49:36.643Z
The "K" in CJK doesn't [only] refer to hangul but [also] to the Korean usage of Chinese characters.
dda
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-10-11T17:41:55.220Z
I have in front of me the [New Practical Chinese Reader](http://www.amazon.com/New-Practical-Chinese-Reader-Textbook/dp/7561910401) (the German translation actually). It list many decomposition and since this is apparently a very well-researched book I wonder what its scholarly reference regarding "C" decompositions may have been.
Drux
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-08-08T05:05:14.767Z
2013-08-08T05:40:11.937Z
2013-08-08T05:40:11.937Z
leesei
<p>There are the Chinese characters and the Chinese radicals in the Chinese language. A set of radicals form a Chinese character. </p>

<p>Quite often a radical itself can be a Chinese character as well.</p>

<p>The Chinese characters can be decomposed (or broken down, split) into radicals for the sake of making the Chinese characters learning process simple and understandable.</p>

<p>That is why Chinese character decomposition is a very effective tool for teaching, learning and memorizing the Chinese characters.</p>

<p>Please see below how Chinese character decomposition makes learning simple, indeed.</p>

<p>The Chinese characters 口 kǒu ‘mouth’ and 日 rì ‘sun’ both include the radical 冂 jiōng ‘down box’.  </p>

<p>In addition, the Chinese character 口 kǒu ‘mouth’ also includes the radical 一 yī ‘one’. The Chinese character 日 rì ‘sun’ also includes the radical 二 èr ‘two’.</p>

<p>So, the overall decomposition of the both Chinese characters looks like following:</p>

<p>口 kǒu ‘mouth’
冂 jiōng ‘down box’
一 yī ‘one’</p>

<p>日 rì ‘sun’
冂 jiōng ‘down box’
二 èr ‘two’</p>

<p>Simple, isn’t it? Now we understand that any Chinese character can be decomposed into the Chinese radicals.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-11T23:34:10.140Z
That's not entirely correct. Each character contains a single radical, and not multiple. It's used to categorize characters in dictionaries.
Joris Weimar
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-02-14T05:15:07.960Z
2017-02-14T05:15:07.960Z
Nicolay Shinkin
<p>I found two public databases that describe the composition of Chinese characters.</p>

<p>1 - <a href="http://cjkdecomp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=cjk-decomp&amp;referringTitle=Home" rel="noreferrer">CJK Decomposition Data</a></p>

<p>2 - <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons%3aChinese_characters_decomposition" rel="noreferrer">Chinese Characters Decomposition</a> on Wiki Commons</p>

<p>I can see how the formats they use are different, but I don't think they are incompatible. Are these two data sources related or completely independent? Is it known which one is of higher quality?</p>

<p>The reason I'm asking is because I'm working on a <a href="http://kangxiradicals.com/lookup" rel="noreferrer">tool</a> that makes it easier to look up characters. It allows you to search by radical anywhere in the character, rather than by just the primary radical used in dictionaries.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-08-04T18:09:37.577Z
1. They are related, there're some rules for character composition. 2. CJK consists of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. So it would be a larger set. 3. *Quality* depends on your criteria. Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan have different standards. So, this is really a professional question ... it's difficult. Maybe you can collect data from  [this site](http://www.zdic.net/), there're many experts helping refining their sources -- I think it is the best Chinese online dictionary, currently.
Stan
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-08-08T16:41:26.997Z
Sjors, what are you using the data for? When you don't say explicitly, people on this site tend to assume you are using whatever you ask for to _study_ Chinese, which I doubt is the case here.
Stumpy Joe Pete
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-08-10T15:29:03.450Z
@StumpyJoePete I updated my question to explain.
Sjors Provoost
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-08-10T21:50:01.107Z
You should check out [this question and its answers](http://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/2984/list-of-hanzi-and-their-components). I can't comment on the _difference in quality_, but there are several sources of such data, and a tool already exists that works like you want.
Stumpy Joe Pete
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-08-11T08:26:20.403Z
@StumpyJoePete thanks. I assume you're referring to [Tatoeba](http://tatoeba.org/eng/tools/search_hanzi_kanji)? That is indeed similar to what I'm trying to do and they are using the Wikimedia data. Of course I stubbornly believe I can do even better :-)
Sjors Provoost
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-08-11T20:07:59.117Z
Best of luck in your quest :)
Stumpy Joe Pete
<characters><database>
How does CJK Decomposition compare to the Wikimedia Commons Chinese characters decomposition data?
# How does CJK Decomposition compare to the Wikimedia Commons Chinese characters decomposition data?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2013-08-04)

I found two public databases that describe the composition of Chinese characters.

1 - [CJK Decomposition Data](http://cjkdecomp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=cjk-decomp&referringTitle=Home)

2 - [Chinese Characters Decomposition](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons%3aChinese_characters_decomposition) on Wiki Commons

I can see how the formats they use are different, but I don't think they are incompatible. Are these two data sources related or completely independent? Is it known which one is of higher quality?

The reason I'm asking is because I'm working on a [tool](http://kangxiradicals.com/lookup) that makes it easier to look up characters. It allows you to search by radical anywhere in the character, rather than by just the primary radical used in dictionaries.

**Tags:** characters, database

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: 1. They are related, there're some rules for character composition. 2. CJK consists of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. So it would be a larger set. 3. *Quality* depends on your criteria. Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan have different standards. So, this is really a professional question ... it's difficult. Maybe you can collect data from  [this site](http://www.zdic.net/), there're many experts helping refining their sources -- I think it is the best Chinese online dictionary, currently.  
> **username_2**: Sjors, what are you using the data for? When you don't say explicitly, people on this site tend to assume you are using whatever you ask for to _study_ Chinese, which I doubt is the case here.  
> **username_0**: @StumpyJoePete I updated my question to explain.  
> **username_2**: You should check out [this question and its answers](http://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/2984/list-of-hanzi-and-their-components). I can't comment on the _difference in quality_, but there are several sources of such data, and a tool already exists that works like you want.  
> **username_0**: @StumpyJoePete thanks. I assume you're referring to [Tatoeba](http://tatoeba.org/eng/tools/search_hanzi_kanji)? That is indeed similar to what I'm trying to do and they are using the Wikimedia data. Of course I stubbornly believe I can do even better :-)  
> **username_2**: Best of luck in your quest :)  

---

## 3 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2014-02-28. Score: 7

I would say that the [CJK Decomposition Data](http://cjkdecomp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=cjk-decomp&referringTitle=Home) (your first link; henceforth CJKDD) is better of the two, for most purposes. Some time ago I used the [character decomposition data from Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons%3aChinese_characters_decomposition), and there were quite a few popular characters with missing decompositions. Now I checked a few of these characters, and all of them had decompositions in CJKDD, so it seems more complete.

The Wikimedia database is better than before, but still lacks decompositions of some characters, such as 齒, 風 and 龠. Moreover, some decompositions are incorrect, e.g. 辰 is shown as a component of 脈. And in general, the Wikimedia database doesn't show components that aren't separate characters. CJKDD, conversely, contains all kinds of components, including the ones that don't have their own Unicode code points.

[Wenlin](http://wenlin.com/) with its [Character Description Language](https://www.wenlin.com/cdl) (CDL) is another source of decomposition data that you may want to look at. Even CJKDD has inconsistent descriptions of some characters, and Wenlin seems a bit better in this regard. For example, even though is present in the database, it is not shown as a component of 範 (範 is decomposed as `範:d(⺮,38298)`, which is in turn decomposed as `38298:a(車,㔾)`. In Wenlin, 範 is correctly decomposed into and . Wenlin uses Unicode [Private Use Areas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Use_Areas) for encoding components that aren't separate characters.

On the other hand, Wenlin has its peculiarities and, for example, decomposes 齒 into and 凵. CJKDD splits 齒 into 止 and , which seems much more natural. In the result, Wenlin doesn't see as a component of 齒. Similarly, 曲 a sub-sub-component of 曹 in CJKDD and Wikimedia, but not in Wenlin.

Another difference between the databases is that CJKDD decompositions are consistently graphical. For example, 條 is decomposed as `條:a(39752,条)`, which is in turn decomposed as `39752:wr(亻,㇑)`. In Wikimedia Commons, 條 is decomposed into 攸 and 木, which has more to do with the historical development of the character and its radical (which happens to be 木), but not with its modern form. Wenlin provides both the graphical decomposition (based on the CDL data), and the list of all the sub-components that may be associated with this character (in this case: 攸亻丨条夂木). Another example: because the CJKDD decompositions are purely graphical, the upper right part of 祭 is shown as 卩. Wenlin, more correctly, shows it as a graphical variant of 又.


---

### Answer by username_4 on 2013-08-08. Score: 2

I'm not an expert in CJK decomposition, but I can share some of my knowledge as a native Chinese.

Both decomposition are purely structural I would say. It is suitable for computer processing (input and recognition). We also use this way to look up a character in dictionary (99% of it actually, there are exceptions).

So in a broad sense they are compatible. But just as different Chinese dictionaries may put the same character under different [radicals](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_%28Chinese_character%29) (部首 bùshǒu), there is no guarantee of consistency and mostly depends on the editor of the classification. Nevertheless these discrepancies should be treated as exceptions rather than norm.

Reference on structural decomposition: <http://chinesenotes.com/chinese_fonts_structure.php>

### More on CJK characters

Chinese character decomposition ***as a study*** is much more than that. None of the above decomposition referred to [六書 liùshū](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification), the six way of Chinese character formation. I highly recommend you look into it if you are interested in Chinese characters.

Japanese has its own fixed set of phonetic characters (仮名 kana) and Chinese characters (漢字 kanji). It uses the rules in 六書 liùshū (mostly 會意 huìyì) to generate many kanji that is only used in Japanese and only have Japanese articulation.

Korean characters (hangul) are actually shapes of consonants and vowels packed in a square so it is also a fixed set of phonetic characters.

p.s. maybe a bit off-topic, sorry :-P

> **Comments:**
> **username_5**: The "K" in CJK doesn't [only] refer to hangul but [also] to the Korean usage of Chinese characters.  
> **username_6**: I have in front of me the [New Practical Chinese Reader](http://www.amazon.com/New-Practical-Chinese-Reader-Textbook/dp/7561910401) (the German translation actually). It list many decomposition and since this is apparently a very well-researched book I wonder what its scholarly reference regarding "C" decompositions may have been.  

---

### Answer by username_7 on 2017-02-14. Score: 0

There are the Chinese characters and the Chinese radicals in the Chinese language. A set of radicals form a Chinese character.

Quite often a radical itself can be a Chinese character as well.

The Chinese characters can be decomposed (or broken down, split) into radicals for the sake of making the Chinese characters learning process simple and understandable.

That is why Chinese character decomposition is a very effective tool for teaching, learning and memorizing the Chinese characters.

Please see below how Chinese character decomposition makes learning simple, indeed.

The Chinese characters 口 kǒu ‘mouth’ and 日 rì ‘sun’ both include the radical 冂 jiōng ‘down box’.

In addition, the Chinese character 口 kǒu ‘mouth’ also includes the radical 一 yī ‘one’. The Chinese character 日 rì ‘sun’ also includes the radical 二 èr ‘two’.

So, the overall decomposition of the both Chinese characters looks like following:

口 kǒu ‘mouth’
冂 jiōng ‘down box’
一 yī ‘one’

日 rì ‘sun’
冂 jiōng ‘down box’
二 èr ‘two’

Simple, isn’t it? Now we understand that any Chinese character can be decomposed into the Chinese radicals.

> **Comments:**
> **username_8**: That's not entirely correct. Each character contains a single radical, and not multiple. It's used to categorize characters in dictionaries.  

---

