Pure radicals

To understand this post, I recommend to read radicals overview first.

 

 

Pure radicals are Kanji building blocks. They never appear as Kanji by themselves but as part of one. Their classification was created to simplify the search of Kanji in dictionaries. But sometimes they do have a meaning by themselves. For example the radical 艹 (grass) often appearing in Kanji connected to plants like: 花 - flower, 草 - grass, 茶 - tea.

As it turns out, the list of useful (and important) pure radicals is very small:

Radical                Position:          Examples
⻌ (road)                                  巡 通
艹 (grass)                                 共 花 草 茶 落 幕
阝 (hill)                                    阪 陳
阝 (town)                                 那 邦 郎 部 郭 都 

厂 (cliff)                                   反 厄 灰
广 (doted cliff)                         序 店 府
疒 (sickness)                            病 症 痛 癖
囗 (box)                                   四 回
亠 (lid)                                     六 玄 市 夜 京
冖 (cover)                                冞 冨 冚 冗

宀 (roof)                                    字 家

儿 (human legs)                        児 兄 四 見

 

 

 Tips:

•  Be careful with 阝. It's implication changes with its' positioning. 
• Don't confuse the 囗 (box) radical with 口 (mouth) Kanji. A simple way to distinguish between them is to remember that,  囗 (box) always encloses some component in the middle while 口 (mouth) never does that (it's empty inside).

The full list of radicals.