The 土 family
土 · tǔ · ㄊㄨˇ — earth
Know 土 and the readings of 5 more characters follow: 徒、肚、吐、杜、墅. In traditional Chinese, most characters carry a sound component — a phonetic — and learning the phonetic once lights up its whole family. This page is that family, drawn live from the map.
The characters
One sound, many meanings: the 部首 beside each character is the other half of the pair, the part that tells them apart.
- 徒tú · ㄊㄨˊ部首 彳 雙人旁 · step with the left foot (Kangxi radical 60)disciple; apprentice; believer; (derog.) wrongdoer (as in 騙徒|骗徒 "swindler" or 叛徒 "traitor" etc); on foot79%
- 肚dù · ㄉㄨˋ部首 肉 · meatbelly66%
- 吐tǔ · ㄊㄨˇ部首 口 · mouthto spit; to send out (silk from a silkworm, bolls from cotton flowers etc)88%
- 杜dù · ㄉㄨˋ部首 木 · treebirchleaf pear (tree); to stop66%
- 墅shù · ㄕㄨˋ部首 土 · earthvilla66%
The percentage is our computed confidence that 土 really signals that character’s sound — scored from how closely the readings agree and how reliably 土 predicts the sound of every character built on it. Mean for this family: 73%.
Words this family builds
- 土地
- 肚子
- 叛徒
- 基督徒
- 教徒
- 土豆
- 信徒
- 土耳其
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