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:
要
Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)HSK 1
要 (yāo)
to demand, to coerce, important, to want
3
Family Characters
2
HSK Words
Tone Fan-out (要)
How this root's pronunciation drifts across the Mandarin tone spectrum:
2 Active Tones
Tone 1yāo
Tone 3yǎo
Family Characters (3)
Root: 要要
yāo
HSK 1Phonetic Root (声旁 / Sound Core)
to demand, to coerce, important, to want