Chinese Character Wiki
話

huà

speech

Phonosemantic compound. 言 represents the meaning and 𠯑 represents the sound.

Components
言 meaning component

言  Meaning component

yán

  

speech

𠯑 sound component

𠯑  Sound component

guā

  

block the mouth

Modern form looks like 舌.

Evolution

話 Bronze script Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)

Bronze script

Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
話 Seal script Chu (Warring States: 475-221 BC)

Seal script

Chu (Warring States: 475-221 BC)
話 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
話 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
話 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

话 (話) 

huà

speech, talk, language; dialect; language; spoken words; speech; talk; words; conversation; what sb said; CL:種|种[zhǒng],席[xí],句[jù],口[kǒu],番[fān]

Most common words with 話
Freq.
Word
Meaning

话

dialect

电话

telephone

说话

to speak

打电话

to make a telephone call

讲话

a speech

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[g]ʷˤrat-s

hwaejH

huà

speak; words


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 99.7277% of movies

81st most common character in movies

170th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

13

Simplified

话

Unicode

U+8A71

Shuowen

“，合會善言也。从言，聲。《傳》曰：‘告之話言。’譮，籀文从會。”


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