Data sources and licensing
Every fact in Radical Mandarin names where it came from: every reading, meaning, component, HSK level and stroke count names its source and how it came from it. Open any item in Explore and its last section, “Source of information about” the item, lists them. This page is the table those notes link to: each source, its license, and what Radical Mandarin’s corpus takes from it. Radical Mandarin’s own corrections and derivations say so. Corpus version 34; 0 facts without a source.
In Radical Mandarin’s corpus
makemeahanzi (dictionary.txt)
LGPL v3 or later · Its content is in Radical Mandarin.
10,960 facts: components, origin type, origin note, meaning, this item, reading.
Character decompositions, etymology notes, and component roles from makemeahanzi (Shaunak Kishore), LGPL v3+.
complete-hsk-vocabulary (CC-CEDICT content)
MIT (compilation); contained CC-CEDICT content CC BY-SA 4.0 · Its content is in Radical Mandarin.
22,262 facts: reading, traditional form, meaning, part of speech.
Word forms assembled via complete-hsk-vocabulary (MIT).
CC-CEDICT (MDBG)
CC BY-SA 4.0 · Its content is in Radical Mandarin.
22,688 facts: reading, traditional form, meaning.
Word meanings, pinyin spellings, and traditional forms include CC-CEDICT content (MDBG), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Copy taken 2026-10-01.
Unicode Unihan database
Unicode License v3 · Its content is in Radical Mandarin.
10,405 facts: component, stroke count, reading, this item.
Character readings, definitions, and radical assignments from the Unicode Unihan database (Unicode License).
Version 18.0.0, copy taken 2026-09-16.
Unicode CJKRadicals.txt and EquivalentUnifiedIdeograph.txt
Unicode License v3 · Its content is in Radical Mandarin.
4,527 facts: component, component number, component form, form, this item.
Radical-number mapping and radical-glyph equivalences from the Unicode Character Database.
Copy taken 2026-09-16.
English Wikipedia, "Kangxi radicals" (pinned revision 1362962863)
CC BY-SA 4.0 · Its content is in Radical Mandarin.
813 facts: component name, component reading, component name (Chinese), component form, component number, form, component, written-as.
Radical names, meanings, classroom names, variant and simplified forms, readings and stroke counts from Wikipedia's "Kangxi radicals" list (Wikipedia contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0), revision 1362962863.
Copy taken 2026-09-16.
ivankra/hsk30 (verified 2021 transcription)
MIT · Its content is in Radical Mandarin.
31,556 facts: reading, part of speech, traditional form, meaning, this item, HSK level.
2021 standard levels and pinyin via the ivankra/hsk30 transcription (MIT), sample-verified against the standard's PDF.
Copy taken 2026-09-03.
HSK exam syllabus 2026 (chinesetest.cn PDF)
Official syllabus document; facts (bands, readings) used, text not reproduced · Its content is in Radical Mandarin.
29,242 facts: HSK level, this item, HSK writing level, reading.
2026 HSK band assignments verified against the official exam syllabus (chinesetest.cn).
Copy taken 2026-09-16.
汉语拼音方案 (Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, 1958)
State document; the tables (initials, finals, spelling rules) are facts, reproduced as such · Its content is in Radical Mandarin.
829 facts: final, initial, this item.
The initials, finals and pinyin spelling rules follow the 汉语拼音方案 (1958).
English Wikipedia, "Pinyin" and "Standard Chinese phonology" (read 2026-09-14)
CC BY-SA 4.0 (facts only: broad IPA transcriptions) · Its content is in Radical Mandarin.
57 facts: IPA.
IPA transcriptions of the initials and finals after Wikipedia's "Pinyin" and "Standard Chinese phonology" articles (Wikipedia contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0).
The Unicode Standard (ideographic description characters U+2FF0..U+2FFB; radical-block names)
Unicode License v3 · Its content is in Radical Mandarin.
16 facts: this item, written-as.
Character structure types are the Unicode Standard's ideographic description characters.
Radical Mandarin curation layer (data/curation)
CC BY-SA 4.0 on release (docs/licensing.md) · Radical Mandarin’s own work.
8,597 facts: meaning, reading, this item, part of speech, HSK level, traditional form.
Corrections are Radical Mandarin's own, each citing the authority it follows.
Radical Mandarin Proprietary Pipeline
CC BY-SA 4.0 on release (docs/licensing.md) · Radical Mandarin’s own work.
14,048 facts: meaning, this item, base, tone, final, initial, reading, form, component form, component number, first tone, second tone, examples.
Derived facts (memberships, bands of tables, forms in use, classes and shapes) are computed by the Radical Mandarin Proprietary Pipeline from the sources above.
Gaps, stated plainly
- Origin notes and part roles come from makemeahanzi, one author's account with no cited authority; a second source (Wiktionary glyph origins) is planned.
- Guides, grammar-pattern statements and examples, and the sound tables' classroom descriptions are written by the app's authors and await native-speaker review (the audit track).
- Audio clips are synthesized (Azure Neural TTS, voice zh-CN-XiaoxiaoNeural); the clip store records the voice and the spoken text, not the service version or the date of synthesis.
- Sentences and readings carry their own attribution on their own pages (Tatoeba contributors, public-domain works, Chinese Wikipedia excerpts); they are not counted in this table.
- Stroke counts follow Unicode 18's kTotalStrokes, which counts 阝 as three strokes and 艹 as four (the Kangxi convention); PRC dictionaries count 那 as six.
- Part-of-speech tags come from complete-hsk-vocabulary's machine taggers and stay hidden in the app until sourced.
- The 2021 standard's word list reaches the corpus through a community transcription (ivankra/hsk30), sample-verified against the standard's image-only PDF.
Checked against
English Wiktionary, "Appendix:Mandarin Frequency lists" 1-5000 (pinned revisions)
CC BY-SA 4.0 · Radical Mandarin’s data is checked against it.
Copy taken 2026-09-15.
GF0025-2021 standard (Ministry of Education PDF)
Official standard document; facts (membership, levels, readings) used, text not reproduced · Radical Mandarin’s data is checked against it.
21,263 facts: reading, part of speech, this item, HSK level.
HSK 3.0 level membership and readings verified against GF0025-2021.
Copy taken 2026-09-03.
elkmovie/hsk30 (OCR word + char lists)
MIT (Pleco Inc.) · Radical Mandarin’s data is checked against it.
Copy taken 2026-09-03.
hermitdave FrequencyWords (zh_cn)
MIT (code) / Creative Commons (lists) · Radical Mandarin’s data is checked against it.
Copy taken 2026-09-03.
CHISE / cjkvi-ids decomposition database
GPL-family (CHISE terms) · Radical Mandarin’s data is checked against it; nothing is copied from it.
Copy taken 2026-09-16.
Rules Radical Mandarin follows
Sources outside Radical Mandarin’s corpus that its own rules come from. The pages of Foundations name them among their sources.
- PaddleSpeech, its tone-change rules (the PaddlePaddle Authors, 2021) (Apache License 2.0): the rules by which 不 and 一 change their tone next to another syllable, the rules of the neutral tone, and the 417 words they read with a neutral tone. Radical Mandarin’s pronunciation rules follow them as they stood on 2026-09-07, with the changes those files state. With Radical Mandarin’s own rule for two third tones in a row, they say how a word whose tones change sounds: 不客气, said bú kè qi, on the page of tones.
Consulted or under assessment
- wordfreq (frequency data) · Apache-2.0 (code); data CC BY-SA 4.0 with recorded SUBTLEX permission · Under assessment.
- English Wiktionary Chinese extract (kaikki/wiktextract) · CC BY-SA (dual GFDL); we take the CC BY-SA grant · Under assessment.
- Tatoeba sentence corpus · CC BY 2.0 FR (per-sentence attribution); CC0 subset · Under assessment.
- Universal Dependencies Chinese GSDSimp · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Under assessment.
- Public-domain modern vernacular shelf (pre-1929 works, authors d. before 1976) · Public domain (China life+50; US pre-1929 publication) · Under assessment.
- Chinese Wikipedia (excerpts) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Under assessment.
- Chinese Grammar Wiki (and the UD learner treebank from it) · CC BY-NC-SA (non-commercial) · Consulted; nothing is copied from it.
- zhongwen.com (Harbaugh genealogies) · Copyrighted, no reuse license · Consulted; nothing is copied from it.
- Taiwan MoE dictionaries (moedict) · CC BY-ND (no derivatives), verify per dataset · Consulted; nothing is copied from it.
- Shuowen Jiezi (Xu Shen, ~100 CE) · Public domain · Consulted; nothing is copied from it.