Chinese Character Wiki
難

nán, nàn

difficult

Original meaning: 

type of bird

Phonosemantic compound. 隹 represents the meaning and 𦰩 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "type of bird". The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components
𦰩 sound component

𦰩  Sound component

jiān

  

to sigh

隹 meaning component

隹  Meaning component

zhuī

  

bird

Evolution

難 Bronze script Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)

Bronze script

Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
難 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
難 Clerical script Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)

Clerical script

Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)
難 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

难 (難) 

nán

difficult, arduous, hard; unable; difficult (to...); problem; difficulty; difficult; not good

难 (難) 

nàn

disaster; distress; to scold

Most common words with 難
Freq.
Word
Meaning

难

problem

难道

don't tell me ...

困难

difficult

难以

hard to (predict, imagine etc)

难过

to feel sad

Component uses

Sound component in 4 characters (2 verified)

灘 攤 癱 儺

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*nˤar

nan

nán

difficult

*nˤar-s

nanH

nàn

difficulty


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 95.0825% of movies

250th most common character in movies

295th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

19

Simplified

难

Unicode

U+96E3

Shuowen

“，鳥也。从鳥，堇聲。難，或从隹。”


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