I'm working through the radical list, and I got to the two box radicals, 匸 (xi3) and 匚 (fang1).

The radicals look identical in handwritten form. Are they both commonly used? And is there a way to tell, by looking at a character, which radical is being used?

I wondered the same thing for 夂 (zhi3) and 夊 (sui1).

And 攵 (pu1) too. My goodness!

They are all pretty commonly used.

夂 (zhi3) and 夊 (sui1) are pretty much the same, although they are listed separately in dictionaries. When the radical is at the top of a character it is 夂 (zhi3), and when it is at the bottom of a character it is 夊 (sui1) but they are written the same. Their meanings are also identical - to walk slowly.

匸 (xi3) and 匚 (fang1) look exactly the same, and I don't know any way to identify which one is being used.

攵 (pu1) is an easy one. It has one extra stroke. See 修 and 悠 (the top rights are different, caused me pain).

To differentiate between 匸 xì and 匚fāng, look at their top left corners. In 匸 xì, the horizontal line starts beyond the left of the vertical stroke. In 匚fāng, the horizontal line is flush against the vertical stroke, nothing protrudes out.

In simplified Chinese, 夊 suī has been depreciated and merged with 夂 zhǐ. Characters like 处, 冬, 夃, and 夏 all belong to the radical 夂 zhǐ.

In traditional Chinese, both radicals are not commonly used. For the radical 夂zhǐ, I’ve only found the character 夃 and for the radical 夊 suī, 复 夏 夔. May be this is because I don’t know many characters.

Then 攵 (pu1) has four strokes as compared to the other two which are of three strokes as Zach has pointed out.

Thanks ZachH and pts; useful stuff!

匸 xì and 匚fāng look the same when they are used in characters. The protruding bit is removed in the (simplified) characters. (I only have simplified experience)

Concerning how often the radicals are used - When a character is listed under one radical for dictionary lookup it still contains other radicals.

Simp: 各, 处, 务, 条, 格
Trad: 後, 各, 處, 變, 愛, 務, 條, 格

These are all basic characters that contain the radical.

Thanks ZachH and pts :-)

Just look up some dictionaries for simplified characters. The 匸 xì radical has virtually been eliminated. The only character remaining in it is the radical itself. So, for those who are studying simplified characters only, they can ignore this radical.

In traditional characters, the protruding bit is very obvious to the discerning eyes.

Yes, ZachH and I are talking about different things. He’s talking about components of a character and I’m talking about how characters are listed under one radical for dictionary look-up.

What about 死亡. That looks like it has the 匸 xì radical.

No, 亡 is descended from 亾 (it shows up that way in 喝). It gets put in the lid-radical group.

BTW, a cool site for researching character etymology is http://www.internationalscientific.org/CharacterASP/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=%E4%BA%A1&submitButton1=Etymology

It searches a big index of ancient characters so you can see how the older forms turned into modern characters.