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Etymology data from Wiktionary via Wiktextract (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese character data from the 說文解字, the Taiwan MOE 國語辭典簡編本 (CC BY-ND 3.0 TW) and HSK/TOCFL lists.

Explanations are written by a local model (gemma4) and only published after a verification pass against the cited sources. How it works.

Chinese

話

huà
words; talk; what somebody says (Classifier: 句 m mn)
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 1
  • radical 言
  • 13 strokes

Etymology graph

  • inherited
  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
  • related
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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ɡroːds): semantic 言 (“word”) + phonetic 𠯑 (OC *ɡroːd). The right component is not related to 舌 (OC *ɦbljed, “tongue”).

Cognate with 曰 (OC *ɢʷad) according to Sagart (1999); if so, it is from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *grwas (“to speak; word”), whence Tibetan གྲོས་སྡུར་བྱེད་པ (gros sdur byed pa, “to consult; to discuss”) (STEDT).

; "episode"

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*grwas “to speak; word”
  • meaningChinese言 “to say; to speak; to talk”
  • soundChinese𠯑 “to block the mouth”

Related: Tibetan གྲོས་སྡུར་བྱེད་པ

Words built on it: 電話, 說話, 打電話

Meanings

character
  1. words; talk; what somebody says (Classifier: 句 m mn)
  2. story; tale
  3. dialect; language, especially a spoken language
  4. to talk about; to discuss
  5. to say; to refer to; to talk about
  6. to tell (someone something)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

話：合會善言也。从言𠯑聲。《傳》曰：“告之話言。”

Xu Shen, c. 100 CE — the first analytical dictionary of Chinese characters.

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 語言。 例：實話、客套話、北平官話
  2. 談論、敘說。 例：話別、閒話家常

© Ministry of Education, Taiwan — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW, shown unaltered.

How 話 was written 字形演變

  1. 話 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 話 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 話 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 話 in Regular script
    Regular
    楷書
    since c. 200 CE

Historical forms collected by the legacy etymfun dataset; most characters have several attested variants.

Sources

  • Historical glyph forms (zdic.net 字形演变) — Rights unverified
  • HSK / TOCFL word lists — Facts (levels)
  • 教育部《國語辭典簡編本》 (Taiwan MOE) — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW
  • 說文解字 Shuowen Jiezi (Xu Shen, c. 100 CE) — Public domain
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 話