Conflicting information about radicals, multiple list of radicals don't agree with each other, I need help to know which one to learn.

So I'm leaning Chinese radicals that are introduced in a text book called "Integrated Chinese", but I find some conflicting information when I compare it to other lists from archchinese or hsk.academy etc.

I have some questions and I hope you can answer them for me.

1)- I know that the main purpose for radicals is to use them to look up words in the dictionary, they can also be used to guess the meaning/pronunciation of some characters. But I read from some sources that there is another concept in Chinese characters called "components", they claim that a learner should learn components rather than radicals. My question is what's the difference between radicals and components? and are there any components that are not radicals themselves?

2)- I understand that some radicals can only be used as a radical and not as a character by themselves. For example 糸 is a radical and a character by itself that means silk, this character is pronounced as mi4. A variant of this radical is 纟which some sources state that it can't be used as a character by itself whereas other state that this character also means silk but it's pronounced differently as si1.

Which one of these sources should I believe?

3)- Another example is the radical 示 which means "to show" pronounced as shi4. Integrated Chinese list 礻as its radical variant, by using a dictionary like archchinese or yellobridge shows that 礻 is pronounced also shi4 but means "cult" totally different thing.

From 2) and 3) in one example a radical and its variant have the same meaning but different pronunciation, on the other example a radical and its variant have the same pronunciation but different meaning.

So my question is what does a radical variant mean if they can differ from each other by meaning/pronunciation? why is one radical considered a variant of another radical?

4)- When I search for 糸 in a dictionary, they translate it into "silk" but when translate silk from English to Chinese I get a different character 丝, so is 糸 actually silk or it's just a radical that has "silk" meaning but can't be used alone? are all radicals work this way?

5)- Different sources for radical lists have different variants of the same radical. For example in my text book they have 手 radical and its variant 扌in other sources they add another variant 才. This is not exclusive to 手. So which is correct and why do they have different variants?

6)- My text book list radical 刀 as the main radical and 刂 as its variant. In ArchChinese they list the opposite 刂 as the radical and 刀 as its variant. What is the difference between a radical and a radical variant?

7)- Is there source where they list the standard list of Chinese radicals along with their standard variants?

I know that this is a long post, so sorry for that, I've been taking notes about these questions that I had in mind for a while to put them together into a single thread.

xiexie.

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