The character 家 (jiā): home
- Pronunciation
- jiā
- Strokes
- 10
- Level
- HSK 1
- Radical
- 宀
- Made of
- 宀豕
What it means
home; family; (polite) my (sister, uncle etc); classifier for families or businesses; refers to the philosophical schools of pre-Han China; noun suffix for a specialist in some activity, such as a musician or revolutionary, corresponding to English -ist, -er, -ary or -ian; CL:個|个[ge4]
Where its shape comes from
The drawing admits of no doubt: a roof, and beneath it a pig, already there on the bone and bronze inscriptions. What the pig is doing there has been argued over for a long time. Xu Shen sees only an element chosen for its sound; Duan Yucai, who called the question a great riddle in 1815, reads it first as a pigsty; others see livestock housed under the dwelling. The formula repeated everywhere, a pig under a roof, therefore a home, settles a debate that is not settled.
Source: Xu Shen, Shuowen Jiezi (121 CE); Duan Yucai, Shuowen Jiezi Zhu (1815); the Chinese University of Hong Kong character database.
A way to remember it
A roof, and underneath it a farm animal. A home is the roof plus whatever lives below it: hold on to that picture and the character almost writes itself, the shelter first, then the creature sheltering under it.
This is a memory aid, not the origin of the character.
Words it appears in
- 大家 dà jiā · HSK 2 everyone; influential family; great expert
- 国家 guó jiā · HSK 3 country; nation; state; CL:個|个[ge4]
- 作家 zuò jiā · HSK 4 author; CL:個|个[ge4],位[wei4]
- 家具 jiā jù · HSK 4 furniture; CL:件[jian4],套[tao4]
- 专家 zhuān jiā · HSK 5 expert; specialist
- 家庭 jiā tíng · HSK 5 family; household; CL:戶|户[hu4],個|个[ge4]
Writing it
See the stroke order of 家, animated stroke by stroke.