家
Tap the pinyin to hear it
home; family; (polite) my (sister, uncle etc); classifier for families or businesses; refers to the philosophical schools of pre-Han China; noun suffix for a specialist in some activity, such as a musician or revolutionary, corresponding to English -ist, -er, -ary or -ian; CL:個|个[ge4]
- HSK 3.0
- Level 1
- Old HSK
- Level 1
- Strokes
- 10
- Radical
- 宀 +7
- Structure
- Top–bottom 上下
- Traditional
- 傢
- Common rank
- #27
- Unicode
- U+5BB6
Sound it out + + =
Formation & memory
Break the character into parts you already know.
How 家 is formed
Phono-semantic compound (形声字)
宀 meaning “roof” + 豕 sound ()
Components 宀 豕
How to remember it
house · Heisig RSH #525
house + sow
Keyword method from Heisig's Remembering Simplified Hanzi.
Words with 家
The most common words first — learning a character in context makes it stick.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 家人 | family member; (old) servant | |
| 国家 | country; nation; state | |
| 家里 | home | |
| 回家 | to return home | |
| 在家 | to be at home; (at a workplace) to be in (as opposed to being away on official business 出差… | |
| 一家子 | the whole family | |
| 一家人 | the whole family; (lit. and fig.) members of the same family | |
| 大家 | everyone; influential family; great expert | |
| 家子 | household; family | |
| 人家 | household; dwelling; family; sb else's house; household business; house of woman's husband… | |
| 人家 | other people; sb else; he, she or they; I, me (referring to oneself as "one" or "people") | |
| 一家 | the whole family; the same family; the family ... (when preceded by a family name); group | |
| 自家人 | sb with whom one is on familiar terms; sb from the same place (same house, same town etc);… | |
| 头家 | organizer of a gambling party who takes a cut of the winnings; banker (gambling); precedin… | |
| 家儿 | (old) child, particularly referring to the son who resembles his father | |
| 小家子气 | petty; small-minded | |
| 家马 | domestic horse | |
| 化学家 | chemist | |
| 家小 | wife and children; wife | |
| 自家 | oneself; one's own family |
Sound family
Characters sharing the sound component 豕 — compare how they read.