会 (huì): can; to know how to

Meanings

1 can; to know how to
2 will (future)
3 to meet; to gather
4 meeting; gathering; association

Characters

会

huì

can; will; to meet; meeting

Examples

你会说中文吗？

Nǐ huì shuō Zhōngwén ma?

Can you speak Chinese?

明天会下雨。

Míngtiān huì xiàyǔ.

It will rain tomorrow.

我们在开会。

Wǒmen zài kāihuì.

We are in a meeting.

Tips

grammar

会 means 'can' in the sense of a learned skill (会开车 'can drive'). 能 covers physical ability or permission (能来吗？ 'can you come?'). 可以 is for permission specifically. For future-tense 'will' (他会来的 'he will come'), 会 implies likelihood or prediction.

mistakes

会 has a second reading kuài, but it is bound - it appears only in 会计 (accounting / accountant) and its derivatives (会计师, 注册会计师). Everywhere else - meetings, future tense, ability - read it as huì. If the compound is not about accounting, default to huì and you will be right.

Components

radical

人 rén

person

Person radical (Kangxi 9) at the top, with arms outstretched into the wide ∧-roof. 会 is grouped under 人 because meetings are gatherings of people; the same human-roof silhouette appears in 今 (now), 全 (whole), and 命 (life).

phonetic

云 yún

cloud; to say

Phonetic - 云 drifted irregularly to huì in this character. Simplified 会 was reformed from traditional 會, which had a more complex middle stack. The modern 云 below is a simplifier's substitution that gives a faint 'cloud of voices' image - fitting for a meeting where people gather and speak.