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:
桀
3
Family Characters
0
HSK Words
Tone Fan-out (桀)
How this root's pronunciation drifts across the Mandarin tone spectrum:
2 Active Tones
Tone 2jié
Tone 5
Family Characters (3)
Root: 桀桀
jié
ExpansionPhonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)
(emperor of Xia dynasty); cruel
磔
zhé
Expansionold term for the right-falling stroke in Chinese characters (e.g. the last stroke of 大[da4]), now called 捺[na4]; sound made by birds (onom.)