Radical 95

玄
Radical 95 (U+2F5E)
玄 (U+7384) "dark, profound"
Pronunciations
Pinyin:	xuán
Bopomofo:	ㄒㄩㄢˊ
Wade–Giles:	hsüan2
Cantonese Yale:	yùhn
Jyutping:	jyun4
Japanese Kana:	ケン ken / ゲン gen (on'yomi) くろい kuroi (kun'yomi)
Sino-Korean:	현 hyeon
Names
Japanese name(s):	玄/げん gen
Hangul:	검을 geomeul
Stroke order animation

Radical 95 or radical profound (玄部) meaning "dark" or "profound" is one of the 23 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals in total) composed of 5 strokes.

In the Kangxi Dictionary, there are only six characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical. In addition, the final dot stroke of the character in the Kangxi Dictionary was omitted (𤣥) to avoid using the same character in Kangxi Emperor's name 玄燁 (see naming taboo).

This radical is not used in Simplified Chinese dictionaries.

Evolution

Compound of 幺 ("thread") + 亠.

• 
  Bronze script character
• 
  Large seal script character
• 
  Small seal script character

Derived characters

Strokes	Characters
+0	玄 ("dark, deep, profound, abstruse")
+4	玅 (=妙 -> 女, "mysterious, subtle, exquisite")
+5	玆 ("now, here; this; time, year")
+6	率 ("to lead; ratio; rate, frequency; limit") 玈 ("black")

Variant forms

There is a design nuance in different printing typefaces for this radical character, akin to the differences found in radical 亠 and 幺. Traditionally, the first stroke is a vertical dot in printing typefaces, and the two turning strokes are broken into two respectively to adapt to the carving of movable type systems, and usually there is a gap between the third and the fourth strokes. Currently, in both Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, the first stroke becomes a slant dot, and the discontinuous turning strokes are merged into one to imitate its handwriting form, though the traditional printing form is still widely used in Traditional Chinese publication. The traditional form remains standard in modern Japanese and Korean printing typefaces.

The difference of the upper part 亠 applies to both printing typefaces and handwriting forms; The difference of the lower part 幺 exists only in printing typefaces, not in any handwriting form.

Traditional Typefaces	Handwriting form Modern Chinese
玄	玄

Sinogram

As an independent sinogram it is a Jōyō kanji, or a kanji used in writing the Japanese language. It is a secondary school kanji. It refers to the color of the night sky.

See also

• List of jōyō kanji

Further reading

• Fazzioli, Edoardo (1987). Chinese calligraphy : from pictograph to ideogram : the history of 214 essential Chinese/Japanese characters. calligraphy by Rebecca Hon Ko. New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN 0-89659-774-1.
• Lunde, Ken (Jan 5, 2009). "Appendix J: Japanese Character Sets" (PDF). CJKV Information Processing: Chinese, Japanese, Korean & Vietnamese Computing (Second ed.). Sebastopol, Calif.: O'Reilly Media. ISBN 978-0-596-51447-1.

External links

• Unihan Database - U+7384
• Chinese Etymology
• Chinese Text Project (character list)