(hé) - and; with in Mandarin

hé

Traditional: 和

HSK 1

#27 of 2,700Core 1000

Translation

and; with

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Word origin

和 (hé) means 'and, harmony'. It pairs 禾 (hé, 'grain', here the phonetic) with 口 (mouth); the original sense related to vocal harmony, later broadening to 'together with' and the conjunction 'and'.

Origin: phono-semantic compound
Root: 禾 (hé, grain, phonetic) + 口 (mouth)

Stroke order

和

Examples

。

He and I are classmates.

。

Apples and bananas are both delicious.

。

Please put the book and pen on the table.

。

My friends and I are going to see a film.

。

Cats and dogs are both animals.

和 (hé) is the primary coordinating conjunction linking nouns and noun phrases in Mandarin. A key grammatical restriction is that 和 can only join nouns and pronouns - it cannot coordinate verb phrases or clauses the way "and" does in English. For clauses, Mandarin uses other connectors or simply juxtaposes them.

The character 和 originally depicted grain in a vessel, suggesting harmony and balance - meanings that persist in words like 和平 (hépíng, peace) and 和谐 (héxié, harmony). When used as a preposition meaning "with" (我和你一起去, "I'll go with you"), 和 is interchangeable with 跟 (gēn) in most contexts.

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Appears in 1 word

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 和.

和平hé píngpeace, peaceful

Used in

Stories

(23)

Grammar articles

(8)

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Mandarin · Free printables

和: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Mandarin word "和" (and; with): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.

This word is taught in chapter 2, lesson 3: 和, 去, 很 and 11 more words.