I'm referring to "Reading and Writing Chinese", which I'm using (have decided not to take classes, for now, as I'm unemployed).
In this book zhuo1 is introduced as "table", and an example of its use is zhuo1zi, also "table", which is really confusing. Which of the two is used?
There are more examples of this, not least yi3 (chair) and yi3zi (chair), ma2 (hemp) and da4ma2 (hemp, marihuana), nü3 (woman) and nü3ren2 (woman), zhu2 (bamboo) and zhu2zi (bamboo).
Some of these are radicals, but others are not.
Can anyone help me unravel this mystery?