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:

幼

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)HSK 4

幼 (yòu)

young

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Family Characters

HSK Words

Tone Fan-out (幼)

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

3 Active Tones

Tone 1yōu

Tone 3yǎo

Tone 4yòu

Family Characters (6)

Root: 幼

幼

yòu

HSK 4

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)

young

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呦

yōu

Expansion

口(mouth)

Oh! (exclamation of dismay etc); used in 呦呦[you1 you1]

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坳

ào

Expansion

土(earth)

variant of 坳[ao4]

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拗

ào

Expansion

扌(hand)

variant of 拗[ao4]

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窈

yǎo

Expansion

穴(cave)

(literary) deep; profound; dim (variant of 杳[yao3])

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黝

yǒu

Expansion

黑(black)

black; dark green

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