Kilo Lingo

(shén) - what (component of 什么) in Mandarin

shén

Traditional: 什

Line drawing of 什
Coloured illustration of 什
#980 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

what (component of 什么)

Word origin

什 (shén) is the person radical 亻 beside 十 'ten'. It first meant a squad of ten or 'assorted', and in the modern word 什么 (shénme) it is used purely for its sound as part of the interrogative 'what'.

Origin
phono-semantic compound
Root
亻(person radical) + 十 (shí, phonetic)

Stroke order

Stroke order for 什

什

Examples

？

When does it start?

？

What is your name?

。

He knows everything.

。

I do not know what he is saying.

？

What would you like to eat?

什 (shén) is a component most commonly seen in 什么 meaning what.

Appears in 8 words

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 什.

什么shén mewhat什么shénmewhat什么时候shénme shíhouwhen为什么wèishénmewhy为什么wèi shén mewhy, for what reason干什么gàn shén mewhat are (you/they) doing, why do that没什么méi shén meit's nothing, never mind, no big deal什么样shén me yàngwhat kind of, what sort of

Used in

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This word is part of lesson 20.