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verb #267

Meanings

  1. 1 to take part in; to participate

Examples

Tā cān yù le zhè xiàng jìhuà de qǐcǎo.
He took part in drafting this plan.
Qǐng suǒyǒu yùhuì rényuán qiāndào.
All meeting attendees please sign in.
Zhè xiàng juédìng zhǐyǒu shǎoshù héxīn chéngyuán yùwén.
Only a few core members had insider knowledge of this decision.

Tips

mistakes
Read (4th tone), not the much more common , whenever the meaning is 'to take part in'. Saying 参与 as cānyǔ is one of the most frequent learner errors on this character. Test: if you can substitute 参加 in the sentence without breaking the meaning, the is the 4th-tone 'participate' reading.
usage
Bound morpheme only — never appears as a free-standing verb. Lives inside a small set of formal compounds: 参与 (participate), 与会 (attend a meeting), 与闻 (have insider knowledge of). Outside these compounds the character almost always reads .

Components

radical
one; horizontal baseline
Final long horizontal is the radical and the entry's filing point. It is the surface across which the handing-over happens; the whole simplified silhouette retains just enough of to keep the 'give, together with' meaning.
ideograph
give; with (upper fused body)
Three-stroke indivisible cursive contraction acting as a single stylized silhouette; no longer corresponds to a standalone CJK component. Historically the heavily collapsed top of traditional 's interlocking-hands element, reduced by the 1956 reform to this compact shape suggesting hands handing something across.

Stroke Order