Missing components

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There are a bunch of components that are complex and common but HanziHero doesn’t name.

犮畢悤厥盧羅冥寧遣善罔尉襄解宣雍詹尊脊亦

All of these appear in 4+ characters but break up into 3+ components, though maybe some of those characters are rare. There are probably around 50 more that fit these rules. Also, sometimes there’s a component in the traditional course but no matching item in the simplified course.

睪亦

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Yeah, we unfortunately don’t cover all components. There are a couple reasons for this.

The first is that the main purpose of HanziHero is teaching components as a means of recognizing and remembering the meaning and pronunciation of most characters. All decisions we make in the curriculum and app are towards that end. Because of this, if there is a “component” that is only used in one or two characters and consists of two more common ones, we will not add it as a component.

The other issue is the definition of “component” itself is vague and ill-defined as well. There are some “components” that lack a unicode character, but nevertheless exist across many characters. There are many “components” that are simply the combination of two common components and whose “meaning” or “purpose” is simply the combination of those components without any new higher-order meaning or “purpose”.

Lastly, one of the main pieces of feedback we get is often in the other direction: people think we have too many components! Given that the granularity of componentization has no “correct” answer, I think we will always find those who want more, less, or the same as today.

Put a bit more succinctly:

  • HanziHero mainly teaches components towards a specific end of aiding memorization, so may lack true component fidelity
  • components are a vague concept and there is no definitive componentization for many characters, as granularity can differ

On a related note, we strive to be as etymologically accurate as possible, so far as it does not get in the way of our pedagogical purposes. However, we don’t view character etymology (with a focus on component analysis) as being part of our mission. There are a couple of reasons for this:

  1. Many etymologies are incomplete, as it is a field of endless research.
  2. Many components do not contribute to the meaning or pronunciation of the modern usage of a character. I.e., they are “empty” in meaning.
  3. Native speakers are unaware of deeper component-sourced etymology, yet nevertheless are perfectly fluent and literate.

This is something I hope we can write or make videos about in the future, as I think it is a common source of confusion for people learning Chinese, whether or not it is through HanziHero.

(Excuse the digression.)

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This really doesn’t answer my point at all, other than to say “you thought about it really hard already”. Many of the components I listed appear in 3+ characters on HanziHero, and are not simply 2 components slapped together, but 3 or 4! For comparison, here are some pretty unhelpful components that you could replace with my list

elder-sister
zero
templar-knight
belt
tortoise
convex
embroidery

These are all used a single time. You likely have a rule that every character must be built out of components. You can express any character as a combination of ground, armless-child, harpoon, drop, rod, and slide so it’s just a tradeoff of 姊 vs 聰蔥總.

Admittedly 犮畢 aren’t great and I’m not imagining a huge overhaul of the ~500 components you already have. I just think there are ~20 or so better components like this you can swap in for those last few borderline ones that are in the course right now.

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Thanks for the additional context. I re-read your question and better understand your point. This is something we have discussed internally before as well. There are definitely some complex components we could add, as listing out the many smaller components instead is more confusing - and more importantly, less amenable towards memorization. Feel free to reply with any other suggestions if you think or come across them.

It may be that by a combination of removing the one-off components and adding these more common ones we can keep the total number roughly the same while improving the overall system, as you point out. :+1:

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Cool, glad it makes sense to you :smiley: Here’s a filtered list of things that would definitely help

new component - times used in HanziHero traditional
悤 - 3
盧 - 5
羅 - 6
寧 - 5
襄 - 7
解 - 4
宣 - 4
詹 - 4
尊 - 3
亦 - 9
登 - 6
帝 - 5
敫 - 4
丙 - 3
度 - 4
侯 - 4
華 - 3
會 - 3
燼 - 3
厥 - 3

Most of the components you defined are pretty useful so I couldn’t find any other 1-use examples, but you can also kick out these 2-use examples.

hogtied-pig
rope
alms-bowl
concave
skewer
tray
well
war-hammers
crazy
veil
terrarium
act
bazooka

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