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:

它

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)HSK 2

它 (tā)

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Family Characters

HSK Words

Tone Fan-out (它)

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

4 Active Tones

Tone 1tā

Tone 2shé

Tone 4duò

Tone 5

Family Characters (14)

Root: 它

它

tā

HSK 2

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)

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蛇

shé

HSK 5

虫(insect)

variant of 蛇[she2]

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舵

duò

HSK 7

舟(boat)

helm, rudder

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坨

tuó

Expansion

土(earth)

mound; heap; lump; classifier for small mounds (e.g. animal scat deposits)

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柁

tuó

Expansion

木(tree)

main beam of roof

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沱

tuó

Expansion

氵(water)

tearful; to branch (of river)

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砣

tuó

Expansion

石(stone)

steelyard weight; stone roller

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跎

tuó

Expansion

足(foot)

to stumble; to waste time

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酡

tuó

Expansion

酉(wine vessel)

flushed (from drinking)

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铊

tā

Expansion

钅(metal)

thallium (chemistry)

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駝

Expansion

馬(horse)

—

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驼

tuó

Expansion

马(horse)

variant of 駝|驼[tuo2]

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鴕

Expansion

鳥(bird)

—

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鸵

tuó

Expansion

鸟(bird)

ostrich

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