和 (hé): and; together with; with

Meanings

1 and; together with; with
2 harmony; peace
3 sum (math)
4 to make peace; to settle
5 to draw; to tie (sports)
6 harmonious
7 Japan; Japanese

Characters

和

hé

and; with; harmony; peace

Examples

我和你是朋友。

Wǒ hé nǐ shì péngyou.

You and I are friends.

邻居之间要和睦相处。

Línjū zhījiān yào hémù xiāngchǔ.

Neighbors should get along harmoniously.

两国终于签了和平条约。

Liǎng guó zhōngyú qiān le hépíng tiáoyuē.

The two countries finally signed a peace treaty.

Tips

grammar

As the conjunction 'and', 和 connects nouns and pronouns, not clauses. Don't use it like English 'and' between sentences. Wrong: 我去商店和买了水果. Right: 我去商店买了水果 — no connector needed for serial actions.

register

和 has five readings total. This entry is hé (the broad 'and / harmony / peace / Japan' sense — by far the most common). The others: hè = to chime in with a poem or song (附和); huó = to knead dough (和面); huò = to mix ingredients or water rinses (搅和); and a niche hú used only in mahjong and cards meaning 'to complete a winning hand' (和牌).

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Right mouth radical, the indexing radical. The original meaning of 和 was 'voices responding in harmony' (still alive in 和谐 'harmony'). The mouth-radical anchors the speech-and-agreement origin; 'and / with' is a grammatical extension from this 'joining together' sense.

phonetic

禾 hé

grain; standing rice plant

Left 禾 supplies the sound exactly: hé to hé, no shift. Originally a pictograph of a rice plant heavy with grain. Adds a faint semantic flavour, voices in harmony like a stalk of grain bowing, though it functions primarily as a phonetic. Same family yields 私, 秋.