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:

土

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)HSK 3

土 (tǔ)

earth

View Root Character Page Kangxi #32 (土) · View Radical

Family Characters

HSK Words

Tone Fan-out (土)

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

4 Active Tones

Tone 1kūn

Tone 3tǔ

Tone 4shù

Tone 5

Family Characters (10)

Root: 土

土

tǔ

HSK 3

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)

earth

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肚

dǔ

HSK 4

⺼(meat)

tripe

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吐

tǔ

HSK 5

口(mouth)

to spit

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墅

shù

HSK 7

野(country)

villa

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杜

dù

HSK 7

木(tree)

surname Du; birchleaf pear (tree)

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牡

mǔ

HSK 7

牛(cow)

male (of animals or plants)

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圤

Expansion

+ 土

—

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坤

kūn

Expansion

申(earth)

one of the Eight Trigrams 八卦[ba1 gua4], symbolizing earth; female principle

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芏

dù

Expansion

艹(plants)

used in 茳芏[jiang1 du4]; Taiwan pr. [tu3]

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钍

tǔ

Expansion

钅(metal)

thorium (chemistry)

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