(fáng) - house, room, building in Mandarin
fángTraditional: 房
Translation
house, room, building
Word origin
A phono-semantic character combining 户 (hù, door, household) as the meaning element with 方 (fāng) as the phonetic.
- Origin
- phono-semantic
- Root
- 户 (hù, door) + 方 (fāng, phonetic)
Stroke order
房
Examples
。
They bought a flat outside the city.
涨。
House prices here have risen a lot in recent years.
，。
The kitchen is downstairs, and the study is upstairs.
租。
We talked for a long time about whether to rent.
。
The old man lives alone in that small room.
房 (fáng) is the building block of nearly every Chinese word about where you live. On its own it is a room or a dwelling; in compounds it does the heavy lifting in 房子 (house), 房间 (room), 厨房 (kitchen), 书房 (study), 房价 (house prices) and 租房 (renting).
Modern speech usually prefers the two-syllable forms. Bare 房 survives mainly in the property market, where 买房, 租房 and 房价 are completely standard, and in written or literary lines such as 一间小房.
The English-speaker trap is assuming 房 means house the way 房子 does. It is closer to a general roofed space, which is why a kitchen and a study are both a kind of 房. When you mean the building your family owns, say 房子.
Where this fits
Used in
Grammar articles
(11)Mandarin Adjectives as Stative Verbs: Why 'I Am Cold' Is 我冷, Not 我是冷
The Mandarin 被 (bèi) Passive: Saying Something Was Done To the Subject
Compound Directional Complements in Mandarin: Verb + 起来, 下去, 过来, 出来 and Motion Relative to the Speaker
Mandarin Existential and Presentative Sentences: 有, 出现, 发生 and Why New Things Go After the Verb
Mandarin Four-Character Idioms (四字格): The Shape, Not the List
Mandarin Location and Existence: 在 for Where, 有 for There Is, and the 上/下/里/外 Position Words
The Spoken Passives 让 (ràng), 叫 (jiào) and 给 (gěi): What People Say Instead of 被
Mandarin Possession with 的 (de): My, Your, His, and When Mandarin Drops the Particle
Mandarin Potential Complements: Can You Reach the Result? (吃得完, 听不懂, 买不起)
Mandarin Question Formation: 吗, V-Not-V, 还是, and the In-Situ Wh-Word System
Mandarin Sentence Structure: Word Order, Topic-Comment and the 把 Construction
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房: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Mandarin word "房" (house, room, building): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.
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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 57.