yǔ, yù
language
Phonosemantic compound. 言 represents the meaning and 吾 represents the sound.
Evolution
Bronze script
Late Spring and Autumn (~500 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernMost common words with 語
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
dialect | ||
language | ||
English (language) | ||
French (language) | ||
Spanish language |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*ŋ(r)aʔ | ngjoX | yǔ | speak |
*ŋ(r)aʔ-s | ngjoH | yù | tell |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 58.6257% of movies
611th most common character in movies
493rd most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 14 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+8A9E |
Shuowen | “語，論也。从言，吾聲。” |
Sources
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