Tongue & Mouth Position: Tip of the tongue rests gently behind the lower front teeth while air escapes through a narrow groove.
Final Rhyme
ui
Vowel Group: -i vowel group
Sounds like: rhymes with 'way'
Mouth Shape Guide: Pronounce as standalone vowel 'way'.
Common Learner Trap: Keep vowel quality steady across all 4 tone contours.
Abbreviated Rhyme Rule: ui is short for uei in Mandarin spelling rules.
Tone
T4 (51)
5 → 1 (51)
4th Tone (High-Falling)
Tone Pitch & Cadence: Tone 4 starts high and plunges sharply, exactly like shouting 'NO!' in frustration.
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Listening trap: Confusing the falling Tone 4 with Tone 3 (dipping). Make sure it starts high and drops immediately without dipping.
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Physical Tone Gesture: A swift, sharp chop downward with your hand, mirroring the plunging pitch of Tone 4.
3. Writing
Topology: Semi-enclosure · Strokes: 12 strokes
Writing Balance Rule: Ensure the enclosure radical (廴) gracefully wraps around the inner phonetic component (豕) without collapsing inward.
4. Components
Radical廴 · Long stride radical (walking, movement)
Semantic Clue (形旁):廴 (indicates movement or advancing forward)
Phonetic Clue (声旁):豕 (original sound: shǐ)
A wild boar (豕) taking a long stride forward (廴), successfully advancing through the brush.
廴 long stride / walking
豕 pig / boar
Phonetic Family (形声字家族)
3· Phonetic Root: 遂 (suí)
5. History
Liushu category: Phono-semantic (形声)
Origin: Originally combined the walking radical (廴) with a pig (豕), representing an animal making progress or moving onward.
Semantic Evolution: Shifted from physical advancement to achieving goals, succeeding, and subsequently used as a conjunction meaning 'thereupon' or 'then'.
Frequently encountered in classical Chinese texts as a sequential conjunction.
6. Sinosphere
🇯🇵
Kanji (Japanese)
On: スイ / Kun: とが.る
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Hanja (Korean)
수
7. Memory
Vivid Mnemonic Story
To SUCCEED (suì), a wild boar (豕) takes a LONG STRIDE (廴) forward and successfully satisfies its hunger.
Phonetic Family (形声字家族)
隧
suìtunnel; underground passage+ 阝 (city)
燧
suì(bound form) material or tool used to light a fire by means of friction or the sun's rays; (bound form) beacon fire (alarm signal in border regions), esp. one lit during daytime to produce smoke+ 火 (fire)