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:

忝

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)

忝 (tiǎn)

to shame

Family Characters

HSK Words

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

3 Active Tones

Tone 1tiān

Tone 3tiǎn

Tone 4tiàn

Root: 忝

忝

tiǎn

Expansion

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)

to shame

添

tiān

HSK 6

to add

舔

tiǎn

HSK 7

to lick

掭

tiàn

Expansion

to smooth (a brush) against the inkstone (after dipping it in ink)