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:

夭

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)

夭 (yāo)

(bound form) to die prematurely (also pr. [yao3]); (literary) (of vegetation) luxuriant

View Root Character Page

Family Characters

HSK Words

Tone Fan-out (夭)

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

4 Active Tones

Tone 1yāo

Tone 3ǎo

Tone 4yuè

Tone 5

Family Characters (9)

Root: 夭

夭

yāo

Expansion

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)

(bound form) to die prematurely (also pr. [yao3]); (literary) (of vegetation) luxuriant

Open Deep Dive

跃

yuè

HSK 6

足(foot)

to jump, to leap

Open Deep Dive

妖

yāo

HSK 7

女(woman)

goblin, witch, devil, bewitching

Open Deep Dive

沃

wò

HSK 7

氵(water)

fertile; rich

Open Deep Dive

喬

Expansion

高(tall)

—

Open Deep Dive

岙

ào

Expansion

山(mountain)

plain in the middle of the mountains; used in place names, esp. in 浙江[Zhe4 jiang1] and 福建[Fu2 jian4]

Open Deep Dive

袄

ǎo

Expansion

衤(clothes)

coat; jacket

Open Deep Dive

飫

Expansion

飠(eat)

—

Open Deep Dive

饫

yù

Expansion

饣(food)

full (as of eating)

Open Deep Dive