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:

奚

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)

奚 (xī)

surname Xi; (literary) what?

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Family Characters

HSK Words

Tone Fan-out (奚)

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

2 Active Tones

Tone 1xī

Tone 5

Family Characters (7)

Root: 奚

奚

xī

Expansion

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)

surname Xi; (literary) what?

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溪

xī

HSK 7

氵(water)

variant of 溪[xi1]

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徯

xī

Expansion

彳(stepping)

footpath; wait for

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谿

Expansion

谷(valley)

—

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蹊

xī

Expansion

足(foot)

(literary) footpath

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鷄

Expansion

鳥(bird)

—

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鼷

xī

Expansion

鼠(rat)

used in 鼷鼠[xi1 shu3]

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