艰
Tap the pinyin to hear it
difficult; hard; hardship
- HSK 3.0
- Level 5
- Old HSK
- Level 5
- Strokes
- 8
- Radical
- 艮 +2
- Structure
- Left–right 左右
- Traditional
- 艱
- Common rank
- #2,509
- Unicode
- U+8270
Sound it out + + =
Formation & memory
Break the character into parts you already know.
How to remember it
arduous · Heisig RSH #2508
crotch + silver
Keyword method from Heisig's Remembering Simplified Hanzi.
Words with 艰
The most common words first — learning a character in context makes it stick.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 举步维艰 | to make progress only with great difficulty (idiom) | |
| 人艰不拆 | life is hard enough as it is; don't burst my bubble (Internet slang) | |
| 不避艰险 | shrink or flinch from no difficulty or danger; make light of difficulties and dangers | |
| 艰巨性 | arduousness; formidability; difficulty | |
| 艰难险阻 | untold dangers and difficulties (idiom) | |
| 艰苦朴素 | leading a plain, hardworking life (idiom) | |
| 艰苦奋斗 | to struggle arduously | |
| 步履维艰 | to have difficulty walking (idiom); to walk with difficulty | |
| 艰难 | difficult; arduous; hard | |
| 艰苦 | difficult; hard; arduous | |
| 艰深 | abstruse; complicated | |
| 丁艰 | (literary) to be in mourning after the death of a parent | |
| 备尝艰苦 | see 備嘗辛苦|备尝辛苦[bei4 chang2 xin1 ku3] | |
| 艰险 | difficult and dangerous; hardships and perils | |
| 艰巨 | variant of 艱鉅|艰巨[jian1 ju4] | |
| 艰巨 | (of a task, mission or responsibility) extremely difficult; challenging; demanding | |
| 艰辛 | hardships; arduous; difficult | |
| 艰深晦涩 | abstruse and unfathomable (idiom) |
Sound family
Characters sharing the sound component 堇 — compare how they read.