子 (zi): toneless noun suffix forming co…

Meanings

1 toneless noun suffix forming concrete nouns from one-syllable roots

Characters

子

zi

toneless noun suffix forming concrete nouns from one-syll…

Examples

桌子上有一个杯子。

Zhuōzi shàng yǒu yí gè bēizi.

There is a cup on the table.

孩子戴着一顶新帽子。

Háizi dài zhe yì dǐng xīn màozi.

The child is wearing a new hat.

这个房子有三个房间。

Zhè ge fángzi yǒu sān ge fángjiān.

This house has three rooms.

Tips

usage

Toneless 子 is one of the most productive noun-forming suffixes in modern Mandarin. It rounds out a one-syllable root into a stable everyday noun: 椅 → 椅子 (chair), 桌 → 桌子 (table), 鼻 → 鼻子 (nose), 孩 → 孩子 (child). It carries no meaning of its own here and is always pronounced toneless.

memory

Mnemonic: think of toneless 子 as a soft 'thing-maker'. Stick it onto almost any everyday concrete root and you get the noun for that thing — bench, knife, fork, box, bag, shoe, basket, plate, bowl, table, chair. If you can hold it, sit on it, or put things in it, odds are its name ends in 子.

Components

pictograph

子 zi

noun suffix

Same three-stroke pictograph of a swaddled infant as the primary reading, indexed as Kangxi radical #39. In this reading the original 'child' meaning has bleached away entirely — the character survives only as a toneless suffix that turns roots like 椅, 桌, 鼻 into the concrete nouns 椅子, 桌子, 鼻子. Historically a tone-reduction of the same morpheme as third-tone zǐ.

Radical

Child Kangxi #39

Highly productive radical for characters dealing with children, kinship, and generations: 字 (character), 孔 (hole), 孕 (pregnant), 孙 (grandchild), 学 (study), 季 (season), 孤 (orphan), 孩 (child). The graph is a pictograph of a wrapped infant — head, swaddled body, arms not yet visible. Usually sits below or to the left in compounds.