Stroke order is not decoration — it determines how the character looks handwritten and how dictionaries index it.
Almost every kanji is built from a small set of reusable parts. Learn the parts once and you stop memorising thousands of unrelated shapes.
The radical is the part a paper dictionary files a kanji under, and it usually hints at meaning. 鯰 is filed under 魚 (fish) — radical number 195 of the 214 in the Kangxi system.
Three quick games built from this character's real data. Your streak is kept in this browser.
Kanji Duel pits 鯰 and 3,000 others head to head. One life. How long can you last?
鯰 means Fresh-water Catfish, (kokuji).
鯰 is read on'yomi (Chinese-derived) ねん; kun'yomi (native Japanese) なまず.
鯰 is written with 19 strokes. The animated diagram on this page shows the correct order.
The radical of 鯰 is 魚 (fish), radical number 195 of the 214 Kangxi radicals. The radical is the component a dictionary files the character under, and it usually points at the character's meaning.
鯰 is built from 魚 (fish) and 念 (wish). Learning kanji as combinations of a few hundred reusable components is far more efficient than memorising each character as a separate shape.
Signed in, we would remember every character you have looked at — and write you reading you can actually get through, built from exactly those.