Hello.

By default, that means we're going to say some controversial things because the current scholarly understanding of characters differs wildly from what most people know, even Chinese language specialists outside of palaeography.

That's fair. I wasn't trying to rip you guys apart. As I mentioned I didn't have a chance to actually see the video (until now) so I was trying to respond more generally to the original poster's questions about the claims alone, and with limited knowledge of the product you guys are developing.

The concepts of "radical" and "functional component" are fundamentally different. Radicals are simply a set of characters under which other characters are indexed in traditionally-arranged dictionaries. I wrote an article about this topic a while back.

Again, that's fair, and I of course know this distinction but wasn't clear based on the original question's phrasing.

Of course we're not the first to think of the idea, but nobody else has done the subject justice because they're working with bad, old, incorrect data.

Could you clarify this point for me? I guess I'm curious what the sources of the data are that are different from what someone like 漢字叔叔 is using, or what is otherwise widely available. I actually recognise a bunch of the spines of books in the background of the video, so I might have some idea on where the data is coming from, but I'd be curious if that's the extent of it.

I'm happy to talk more about what we're doing, provide references, answer questions, etc.

Actually, if you guys are up to it I'd actually be interested in chatting with you over Skype about it. I mean that with sincere interest in the project, and not to ambush you for imaginary internet points or anything.

I actually have some other concerns that I don't need to bring up here that I'd like to hear your motivations for. I don't want to ask them here because I don't want to be causing you guys any more trouble this close to your Kickstarter deadline. If you're able to talk this weekend (I know it's half over already) and answer some questions I'll happily promote your campaign for these last few days to help you get over the edge.

And I'm sorry if I've offended you. I was attempting to respond to the original poster's questions without having actually seen your video. I'm more than happy to be proven wrong about what you guys are attempting, but from what I was able to access of the Kickstarter page.

I would be happy if my first impression is proven wrong.