> Oftentimes there are hints in the characters (the "phonetics" mentioned by the writer), but usually not enough to guess correctly. Yeah, it's unfortunately n

> Oftentimes there are hints in the characters (the "phonetics" mentioned by the writer), but usually not enough to guess correctly. Yeah, it's unfortunately not enough to sightread purely from radicals. My girlfriend has been trying to teach me and it's the biggest frustration. The discussion keeps going "this radical is how you know it's pronounced ___, oh, but not in this one, that's pronounced entirely differently". If I don't know a character, the phonetic radicals might let me guess close but not correctly or it might not have anything in common. The semantic radicals are a little better IMO, but not enough to guess more than the category something might be in sometimes. I'm not sure if the rules are just full of exceptions or if it's simply change over the past millennia, but it means rote learning has been the only way for me to learn hanzi.