Chinese character decomposition I found that many (most?) Chinese characters look like they're composed of more primitive ones, like:
做　＝　亻十口夂
你　＝　亻尔
吃　＝　卩乙
and so on.
I this a real phenomenon or just my European imagination?
If it is not real then why? If it is real, then what is the name of this phenomenon? I know there are &quot;radicals&quot;, but I'm not sure all components I see belong to the set of radicals.
recent studies called them components (部件). there're 1300+ basic component:

http://chardb.iis.sinica.edu.tw/system_intro.jsp