葡 (pú) - Meaning, Stroke Order & Audio

葡

pú[pu2]Tone 2

Portugal / grape

HSK 5

Guru Deep Dive

English · Portugal / grape

Cached lesson

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Topology:Top-bottom

Strokes:12

Writing Balance Rule: The grass radical on top (艹) should be written wide and flat, while the lower body (葡) is centered neatly underneath with balanced vertical weight.

1. Meaning

Portugal / Portuguese (primarily used in compound words)

Abbreviation for Portugal (葡萄牙)Used in the word for grape (葡萄)

Noun / Bound FormNeutralBound morpheme#geography#countries#food

Sample Usage

葡萄
pú tao
grape
葡萄牙
pú táo yá
Portugal

2. Sound

/[pu³⁵]/Tone: 35

葡

púpu2

´(35)

=pú

Initial Consonant

Type: Aspirated Bilabial

Sounds like: p sound as in 'spy'

Aspirated

Airflow Tactile Test: Strong puff of air! A tissue held before lips MUST fly forward.

Tongue & Mouth Position: Lips pressed together then released with a strong puff of air

Final Rhyme

Vowel Group: -u vowel group

Sounds like: oo sound as in 'too'

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

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

Tone

T2 (35)

3 → 5 (35)

2nd Tone (Mid-Rising)

Tone Pitch & Cadence: Tone 2 starts mid and rises sharply to high, identical to a puzzled question in English like 'Huh?' or 'What?'

Sandhi: When followed by a neutral tone syllable like in 葡萄 (pú tao), the second syllable loses its inherent tone and becomes neutral.

👂

Listening trap: Confusing the rising Tone 2 (pú) with Tone 3 (pǔ), make sure the pitch goes straight up.

👋

Physical Tone Gesture: A rising hand gesture starting from your chest and moving sharply up and away, matching the upward pitch of Tone 2.

3. Writing

Topology: Top-bottom · Strokes: 12 strokes

Writing Balance Rule: The grass radical on top (艹) should be written wide and flat, while the lower body (葡) is centered neatly underneath with balanced vertical weight.

4. Components

Radical 艹 · Grass Radical (Plants, vegetation, herbs)

Semantic Clue (形旁): 艹 (Indicates that the original plant-related nature or vine context applies (such as grapes).)

Phonetic Clue (声旁): 匐 (original sound: fú / pú)

The grass radical (艹) sits on top of the phonetic base 'crawl' (匐), bringing together the imagery of a creeping vine plant bearing juicy fruit.

艹 Grass/plant radical
匐 Phonetic and structural base meaning to crawl or creep

Phonetic Family (形声字家族)

2· Phonetic Root: 匍 (pú)

5. History

Liushu category: Phono-semantic (形声)

Origin: Combined from the plant classifier grass radical (艹) and the phonetic component 匐 (fú, meaning to crawl), illustrating a crawling vine plant.

Semantic Evolution: Originally coined to transliterate foreign names and represent creeping vine fruits like grapes (葡萄), later adopted as an abbreviation for Portugal (葡萄牙).

Brought into Chinese trade terminology centuries ago to phonetically match foreign words like 'Portugal'.

6. Sinosphere

🇯🇵

Kanji (Japanese)

On: ホ

🇰🇷

Hanja (Korean)

포

Sound Shift Bridge: Used phonetically across East Asian languages to approximate foreign sounds starting with 'po-'.

7. Memory

Vivid Mnemonic Story

Imagine a lush GREEN GRASS (艹) blanketed over the ground, where tiny vines CRAWL (匐) along to produce juicy purple grapes for a traveler heading to PORTUGAL.

Phonetic Family (形声字家族)

匐

fúto crawlWithout the grass radical on top, it means crawling.

葡

púPortugal / grapeHas the grass radical (艹) on top.

Lookalikes & Traps (形近字)

匐(fú)

匐 lacks the grass radical (艹) on top and uses a different tone.

8. Mastery

Active Recall Challenge

我最喜欢吃的水果是[___]萄。

Clue: pú

Common Learner Pitfall

Treating '葡' as an independent standalone word in modern conversational Mandarin, whereas it almost exclusively appears inside 葡萄 or 葡萄牙.

Memory Prompts

Recognition: What country or fruit does this character typically represent when you see it in a compound like 葡萄牙?

Production: How do you write the character for 'pú' found in grapes (葡萄)?

葡púPortugal / grape

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