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:

聂

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)

聂 (niè)

surname Nie; to whisper

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Family Characters

HSK Words

Tone Fan-out (聂)

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

1 Active Tones

Tone 4niè

Family Characters (7)

Root: 聂

聂

niè

Expansion

Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)

surname Nie; to whisper

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摄

shè

HSK 5

扌(hand)

to take in, absorb, or capture

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慑

shè

HSK 7

忄(heart)

(bound form) to fear; to be cowed; (bound form) to frighten; to intimidate

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嗫

niè

Expansion

口(mouth)

move the mouth as in speaking

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滠

shè

Expansion

氵(water)

name of a river

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镊

niè

Expansion

钅(metal)

(bound form) tweezers; to use tweezers (to grasp, pick up, or pull out etc, depending on whether the following resultative verb is 住[zhu4] or 起[qi3] or 出[chu1] etc)

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颞

niè

Expansion

页(head)

bones of the temple (on the human head); see 顳顬|颞颥, temple

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