你 (nǐ) · you (singular, informal)

Meanings

1 you (singular, informal)

Characters

你

nǐ

you

Examples

HSK 1

你好！

Nǐhǎo!

Hello!

HSK 1

你是哪里人？

Nǐ shì nǎlǐ rén?

Where are you from?

HSK 1

你吃了吗？

Nǐ chī le ma?

Have you eaten?

Tips

culture

你吃了吗？ (Have you eaten?) is a traditional Chinese greeting, reflecting how important food is in Chinese culture. It doesn't require a literal answer - it's like 'How are you?'

usage

您 is the polite form of 你, used with elders, strangers, and in formal situations.

Components

radical

亻 rén

person (radical)

Left person radical - the side-stacking variant of 人. Anchors 你 firmly in the human-pronoun family - the second-person counterpart to 他 / 她 (he/she). Picture: a person facing you, signalling 'this human in front of me'.

phonetic

尔 ěr

you (literary)

Right 尔 supplies both the sound (ěr → nǐ - a partial drift, with the final still rhyming) and the original meaning. 尔 is itself the classical word for 'you' - adding 亻 just made the personhood explicit. So 你 is essentially '尔 with a person sticker on it.'