粥 (yù) - Meaning, Stroke Order & Audio

粥

yù[yu4]Tone 4

congee, gruel (also read as zhōu; reading yù is used in ancient foreign names like Xunyu)

HSK 6

Multiple Readings (多音字):

Guru Deep Dive

English · congee, gruel (also read as zhōu; reading yù is used in ancient foreign names like Xunyu)

Cached lesson

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Topology:Left-right

Strokes:12

Writing Balance Rule: The left side (弓 and 米 components) must remain compact and balanced vertically against the right side (米 component), ensuring the character does not lean outward.

1. Meaning

congee, rice porridge (standard reading zhōu); ancient reading yù used in specific compound names

gruelthin rice soup

NounFormal / Literary for the yù readingBound morpheme#food#grains#cooking

Sample Usage

葷粥
xūn yù
Xunyu (ancient nomadic tribe name, historical context)
喝粥
hē zhōu
to eat congee (using the standard zhōu reading)

2. Sound

/[y³⁵]/Tone: 35

粥

yùyu4

`(51)

=yù

Initial Consonant

Type: Palatal Glide (Zero Initial)

Sounds like: Zero initial vowel glide

Unaspirated

Airflow Tactile Test: Acts as a bridge into 'i' or 'ü' vowel sounds.

Tongue & Mouth Position: Lips pursed forward, tongue tip resting behind lower front teeth.

Final Rhyme

Vowel Group: -v vowel group

Sounds like: French 'u' or German 'ü'

Note: Written as 'u', pronounced as rounded 'ü' [y].

Mouth Shape Guide: Pronounce as standalone vowel 'ü'.

Common Learner Trap: Keep vowel quality steady across all 4 tone contours.

Tone

T4 (51)

5 → 1 (51)

4th Tone (High-Falling)

Tone Pitch & Cadence: Tone 2 starts mid and rises sharply to the top, exactly like asking 'What?' in English disbelief.

Sandhi: When followed by another 4th tone, it shifts to a half-rising pitch.

👂

Listening trap: Often confused with standard tone 4 (yù) or tone 1 (yū) if the upward inflection is cut short.

👋

Physical Tone Gesture: Hand moves diagonally upward from bottom-left to top-right, mimicking an inquisitive question mark.

3. Writing

Topology: Left-right · Strokes: 12 strokes

Writing Balance Rule: The left side (弓 and 米 components) must remain compact and balanced vertically against the right side (米 component), ensuring the character does not lean outward.

4. Components

Radical 米 · Rice Radical (rice, grain)

Semantic Clue (形旁): 米 (Indicates that the substance is made from grain or rice.)

Phonetic Clue (声旁): 鬻 (original sound: yù)

A complex combination featuring grain (米) and elements depicting boiling or selling (鬻), signifying grains cooked down into liquid congee.

弓 bow or curved shape
米 rice grain
欦 phonetic and structural framework

5. History

Liushu category: Phono-semantic (形声)

Origin: Originally an ancient character depicting grain being boiled in a vessel, later split into multiple readings depending on whether it means porridge or appears in historical ethnonyms.

Semantic Evolution: Shifted from a broad verb meaning to sell or provide gruel to specifically representing rice porridge (zhōu) and rare historical proper nouns (yù).

In ancient texts, the reading yù specifically refers to northern nomadic groups like the 葷粥 (Xunyu).

6. Sinosphere

🇻🇳

Sino-Vietnamese

chúc / dục

The reading 'dục' mirrors the entering/checked tones or ancient readings preserved in Sino-Xenic layers.

🇯🇵

Kanji (Japanese)

On: シュク (shuku) / イク (iku) / Kun: かゆ (kayu)

🇰🇷

Hanja (Korean)

죽

Sound Shift Bridge: Shared East Asian literary vocabulary borrowings from Middle Chinese.

7. Memory

Vivid Mnemonic Story

Imagine an ancient nomad chief named Yù eating a hot bowl of rice porridge (米) cooked over an open campfire.

Phonetic Family (形声字家族)

粥

zhōucongeeStandard modern reading and meaning for rice porridge.

鬻

yùto sell / to tradeContains the full base character structure without simplified shifts.

Lookalikes & Traps (形近字)

粥 (zhōu)(zhōu)

The exact same character glyph! Only the pronunciation and contextual meaning change between congee (zhōu) and historical names (yù).

8. Mastery

Active Recall Challenge

在歷史文獻中，「葷[___]」是古代北方民族的稱呼。

Clue: yù

Common Learner Pitfall

Assuming the character is always pronounced zhōu and missing its rare historical reading yù when encountering ancient proper nouns.

Memory Prompts

Recognition: When you see 粥 used in the ancient name 葷粥, what is its special pronunciation?

Production: How do you write the character for congee that also reads as yù in historical terms?

粥yùcongee, gruel (also read as zhōu; reading yù is used in ancient foreign names like Xunyu)

Speed:

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