eye
a look or glancesmall hole or openingsalient pointclassifier for wells or cave-dwellings
Noun / ClassifierNeutral#anatomy#vision#classifiers
Sample Usage
他的眼睛很大。
tā de yǎnjīng hěn dà.
His eyes are very big.
看一眼。
kàn yī yǎn.
Take a glance.
眼
yǎnyan3
|++ˇ(214)
=yǎn Type: Palatal Glide (Zero Initial)
Sounds like: y as a glide (like 'y' in 'yes')
Airflow Tactile Test: Acts as a bridge into 'i' or 'ü' vowel sounds.
Tongue & Mouth Position: Tongue body raises toward the hard palate for the semi-vowel glide.
Vowel Group: -a vowel group
Sounds like: -an rhymes with 'on' in 'con' or 'an' in 'tan'
Mouth Shape Guide: Pronounce as standalone vowel 'ahn'.
Common Learner Trap: Keep vowel quality steady across all 4 tone contours.
Tone Pitch & Cadence: Tone 3 dips low like a skeptical 'Hmm?' in English.
Sandhi: When followed by another 3rd tone syllable, yǎn changes to a 2nd tone (yán).
👂Listening trap: Do not confuse it with ān or yán; ensure the dipping 3rd tone contour is clearly articulated.
👋Physical Tone Gesture: Trace a checkmark in the air: dip down from mid-level to low and sweep back up high.
Topology: Left-right · Strokes: 11 strokes
Writing Balance Rule: Keep the left component (目) slightly narrower than the right component (艮) to maintain balanced symmetry.
Radical 目 · Eye Radical (eye)
Semantic Clue (形旁): 目 (denotes the eye)
Phonetic Clue (声旁): 艮 (original sound: gěn)
The eye (目) is connected to a good (艮) sense of sight.
- 目 eye
- 艮 stubborn / sound clue
Liushu category: Phono-semantic (形声)
Origin: Originally depicted as a pictorial representation of an eye with a pupil inside (目), combined later with 艮 to provide the phonetic sound.
Semantic Evolution: From the physical organ of sight, it extended metaphorically to small apertures, holes, and focal points.
- Ancient oracle bone scripts clearly drew eyelashes radiating around an oval eyeball.
🇻🇳Sino-Vietnamese
nhãn
Mandarin 3rd tone corresponds roughly to Vietnamese hỏi/ngã tone.
🇯🇵Kanji (Japanese)
On: ガン (gan) / Kun: まなこ (manako)
Sound Shift Bridge: Shared East Asian root vocabulary originating from Classical Chinese.
Vivid Mnemonic Story
You use your EYE (目) to look GOOD (艮) when staring at yourself in the mirror.
很hěnveryAdd the walk radical (彳) for 'very'.
根gēnrootAdd the wood radical (木) for plant roots.
Lookalikes & Traps (形近字)
艮(gěn)
艮 lacks the eye radical (目) on the left.
8. Mastery
Active Recall Challenge 他沙子进了[___]。
Clue: yǎn
Common Learner PitfallForgetting the left-right proportions and crowding the strokes of 目 and 艮 together.
Memory Prompts
Recognition: What does the character 眼 mean and how is it pronounced?
Production: How do you write the character for 'eye' (yǎn) using the eye radical?
Speed: Searching YouTube for native pronunciation videos...