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:

窜

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)HSK 7

窜 (cuàn)

to flee, to scuttle

Family Characters

HSK Words

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

2 Active Tones

Tone 1cuān

Tone 4cuàn

Root: 窜

窜

cuàn

HSK 7

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)

to flee, to scuttle

撺

cuān

Expansion

rush; stir up

蹿

cuān

Expansion

to leap up; (coll.) to gush out; to spurt out

镩

cuān

Expansion

ice spud (aka ice chisel) with a pointy tip; to break a hole in ice (for ice fishing etc) using an ice spud