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:

延

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)HSK 4

延 (yán)

to prolong, extend, or delay

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Family Characters

HSK Words

Tone Fan-out (延)

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

3 Active Tones

Tone 2yán

Tone 4dàn

Tone 5

Family Characters (7)

Root: 延

延

yán

HSK 4

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)

to prolong, extend, or delay

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蛋

dàn

HSK 1

虫(insect)

egg

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诞

dàn

HSK 6

讠(speech)

birth

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涎

xián

Expansion

氵(water)

variant of 涎[xian2]

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筵

yán

Expansion

⺮(bamboo)

bamboo mat for sitting

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蜒

yán

Expansion

虫(insect)

slug; used in 蜿蜒[wan1 yan2]

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誕

Expansion

言(speech)

—

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