Phonetic Families & Components

Sound Roots & Semantic Radicals Explorer

Decode Chinese characters by their shared sound roots and see how semantic radicals split their meanings across tones.

Popular Roots:

向

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)HSK 2

向 (xiàng)

variant of 向[xiang4]; direction

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Family Characters

HSK Words

Tone Fan-out (向)

How this root's pronunciation drifts across the Mandarin tone spectrum:

3 Active Tones

Tone 3xiǎng

Tone 4xiàng

Tone 5

Family Characters (6)

Root: 向

向

xiàng

HSK 2

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)

variant of 向[xiang4]; direction

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响

xiǎng

HSK 2

口(mouth)

echo, sound, noise

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垧

shǎng

Expansion

土(earth)

unit of land area (equivalent to 10 or 15 mǔ 畝|亩[mu3] in parts of northeast China, but only 3 or 5 mǔ in northwest China)

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晌

shǎng

Expansion

日(sun)

part of the day; midday

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餉

Expansion

飠(food)

—

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饷

xiǎng

Expansion

饣(food)

soldier's pay

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