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Learn Mandarin Mandarin Chinese Character Etymology

Character Formation
Definition one; a, an; alone; Kangxi radical 1
Formation
Method
  1. (指事) Indicative. As a character component, it is often used because of its shape and can take multiple meanings depending on its location. Hence, placed at the top, it is often used to represent the heaven (e.g. , , ) while placed at the bottom it could represent the ground (e.g. , , ).
Character Decomposition
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Non-phonetic Component of …
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Chinese characters or pinyin syllables

See also