Things of interest.
June 8, 2015
Strong Kanji Phonetics
Certain Chinese radicals are phonetically 'strong'.
What I mean by strong: when they appear in compound forms, it is their pronunciation that will hold, not the other.
For example, the following mean ‘adroit’, ‘merits’, and ‘creek’ respectively. Yet all are pronounced ‘kou’ (こう) due to the presence of the ‘工’ radical:
巧・功・江