Chinese Character Bites – #43 –家

Our character for today is 家

Simplified Chinese character: 家
Traditional Chinese character: 家
(The simplified character and the traditional character are the same)

Pronunciation:

This character is pronounced jiā in the 1st tone.

What it means:

家 means ‘family’, and from this it can also have the extended meaning of ‘home’ or ‘house’

For example: 我的家 ‘my house’ or ‘my family’.

You’ll also see it in 大家 (everybody – literally ‘big family’) and 国家 (country – literally ‘state/country family’.

Let’s break it down:

The top part of the character 宀 is a picture of a roof, and the bottom part 豕 is an old character for ‘pig’.

So, in other words, the character literally means a house where you keep domestic animals, and therefore has come to represent ‘family’.

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