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:

用

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)HSK 1

用 (yòng)

to use

View Root Character Page Kangxi #101 (用) · View Radical

Family Characters

HSK Words

Tone Fan-out (用)

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

4 Active Tones

Tone 1yōng

Tone 3yǒng

Tone 4yòng

Tone 5

Family Characters (6)

Root: 用

用

yòng

HSK 1

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)

to use

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拥

yōng

HSK 5

扌(hand)

to hold in one's arms; to embrace

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庸

yōng

HSK 7

+ 广

ordinary

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甬

yǒng

Expansion

+ 用

Yong River 甬江[Yong3 Jiang1] in Ningbo 寧波|宁波[Ning2 bo1]; short name for Ningbo

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甯

Expansion

心(heart)

—

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痈

yōng

Expansion

疒(sickness)

carbuncle

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