Writing Balance Rule: Keep the top slanted stroke compact, ensure the horizontal hook starts cleanly, and let the diagonal leg sweep gracefully to the lower right to maintain structural balance.
1. Meaning
dog
Kangxi radical 94
NounLiterary#animals#nature
Sample Usage
警犬
jǐngquǎn
police dog
猎犬
lièquǎn
hunting dog
2. Sound
/[t͡ɕʰy̯an²¹⁴]/Tone: 214
犬
quǎnquan3
|
++
ˇ(214)
=quǎn
Build the syllable
Step-by-step blending
quan
Tone mark placement: Tone mark sits on "a" per main-vowel priority (a > e > o; in -iu/-ui the mark takes the second vowel).
Initial Consonant
q
Type: Aspirated Alveolo-Palatal
Sounds like: ch sound produced with the tongue blade flat against the back of the lower teeth and middle of tongue raised toward the hard palate
Aspirated
Airflow Tactile Test: Extremely strong burst of breath! Tissue held before mouth MUST fly.
Tongue & Mouth Position: Tongue tip rests behind lower front teeth while the blade touches the hard palate.
Final Rhyme
uan
Vowel Group: -a vowel group
Sounds like: üan rhymes with 'yüan' (ü + an)
Note: Written as 'uan', pronounced as rounded 'üan' [y].
Mouth Shape Guide: Pronounce as standalone vowel 'üen'.
Common Learner Trap: Keep vowel quality steady across all 4 tone contours.
Abbreviated Rhyme Rule: üan contains the rounded front vowel ü gliding into the nasal an.
Tone
T3 (214)
2 → 1 → 4 (214)
3rd Tone (Low-Dipping)
Tone Pitch & Cadence: Tone 3 starts mid-high, dips low to the bottom of your vocal range, and sweeps up high, just like asking a disbelieving 'Really?'
Sandhi: When followed by another 3rd tone syllable, quǎn changes to a 2nd tone (rising 35).
👂
Listening trap: Do not confuse the palatal aspirated initial q [tɕʰ] with the retroflex zh or alveolar c.
👋
Physical Tone Gesture: Trace a checkmark in the air: dip down from your chest and sweep sharply up.
3. Writing
Topology: Single character · Strokes: 4 strokes
Writing Balance Rule: Keep the top slanted stroke compact, ensure the horizontal hook starts cleanly, and let the diagonal leg sweep gracefully to the lower right to maintain structural balance.
4. Components
Radical犬 · Dog radical (dog or beast)
Semantic Clue (形旁):犬 (Denotes animals or beasts)
A pictographic character portraying a dog with its head, tail, and legs stretched out.
大 represents the body and limbs of a large creature
丶 represents the dog's tail or ear
Phonetic Family (形声字家族)
4· Phonetic Root: 犬 (quǎn)
5. History
Liushu category: Pictogram (象形)
Origin: In Oracle Bone script, 犬 was drawn as the silhouette of a dog viewed from the side, showing its open mouth, drooping ears, and curled tail.
Semantic Evolution: While modern colloquial Mandarin uses 狗 (gǒu) for 'dog', 犬 (quǎn) remains preserved in literary compounds, idioms, and specialized vocabulary like police dogs (警犬).
It serves as Kangxi radical 94, appearing on the left side of characters as 犭 (e.g., 猫, 猪).
6. Sinosphere
🇻🇳
Sino-Vietnamese
khuyển
The rising tone in Sino-Vietnamese corresponds roughly to Mandarin's dipping tone.
🇯🇵
Kanji (Japanese)
On: ケン (ken) / Kun: いぬ (inu)
🇰🇷
Hanja (Korean)
견
Sound Shift Bridge: Cognate with Proto-Sino-Tibetan words for dog, sharing phonetic roots across East Asian language families.
7. Memory
Vivid Mnemonic Story
Imagine a big person (大) with a tiny extra dot (丶) bounding around like an energetic puppy dog (犬).
Phonetic Family (形声字家族)
厌
yànloathe, dislike, be fed up with+ 厂 (cliff)
厣
yǎnoperculum (Latin: little lid); a covering flap (in various branches of anatomy)+ 甲 (armor)