The Body — 月/手/足/目/口/耳/心

A radical tour of the anatomy namespace

There are roughly thirty body-part words you'd use in daily Chinese — head, face, hand, foot, leg, eye, ear, and so on. Memorizing them one by one is a losing strategy. They are not thirty arbitrary tokens; they are thirty instances belonging to seven classes, and each class is announced by a radical.

Learn the seven radicals and the body falls out of them the same way methods fall out of an interface. Better still, the same radicals keep paying you back in verbs: anything you do with a hand has 扌; anything you do with a foot has 𧾷; anything that is an emotion has 忄.

// The body namespace.
import { liver, stomach, leg, face } from "月";   // flesh module
import { hand, push, pull, grab }    from "扌";   // hand actions
import { foot, run, jump, kick }     from "𧾷";  // foot actions
import { eye, see, look, sleep }     from "目";   // visual module
import { ear, hear }                 from "耳";   // audio module
import { mouth, lip, tongue }       from "口";   // I/O interface
import { think, fear, busy, hope }   from "忄";   // mental state

1. The radical map

Seven radicals, the whole body. Anchors jump to each section below.

9. Putting it together

Once you have the seven radicals, whole-body vocabulary starts compounding from the parts. A handful of compounds worth knowing:

10. Sentence patterns

Five sentences that fall out of this vocabulary once you have the radicals.

// 我 头 疼。
// wǒ tóu téng
// "My head hurts." (topic-comment, no verb "to have")
me.head.aches === true;

// 她 的 眼睛 很 大。
// tā de yǎnjing hěn dà
// "Her eyes are big." (的 = possessive, 很 = degree filler)
her.eyes.size === "big";

// 我 想 睡觉。
// wǒ xiǎng shuìjiào
// "I want to sleep." (想 = want, also "think")
me.want(sleep);

// 他 跑 得 很 快。
// tā pǎo de hěn kuài
// "He runs fast." (得 introduces a manner/degree complement — see §11)
him.run().speed === "fast";

// 你 的 身体 好 吗？
// nǐ de shēntǐ hǎo ma?
// "How's your health?" — the canonical wellness check-in
your.body.status === "good"?;

11. Next steps

• Browse body & anatomy vocabulary — filtered by tag
• Start a review session — lock in the flesh-radical set first
• Back to: Food & Eating — for the protein side of 月
• Module 4: Composition — the full theory of radicals

Next in this series: the home, travel, and time. Each one is three or four radicals and twenty-or-so words that compound off them.