歌 (gē): song

Measure Word

一首歌 shǒu

Meanings

1 song

Characters

歌

gē

song; to sing

哥 (older brother) phonetic + 欠 (yawn/breath) — a song breathed out

Examples

这首歌很好听。

Zhè shǒu gē hěn hǎotīng.

This song sounds great.

你会唱中文歌吗？

Nǐ huì chàng Zhōngwén gē ma?

Can you sing Chinese songs?

Tips

grammar

The measure word for songs is 首, not 个. 一首歌 (a song).

culture

KTV (karaoke) is hugely popular in China. Friends often rent private rooms to sing 歌 together, and it's a common social activity for all ages.

Components

radical

欠 qiàn

to yawn; open mouth wide

Right side 欠 — pictograph of a person leaning with mouth thrown open, exhaling. The indexing radical of 歌. Singing is fundamentally a wide-mouthed exhalation, so the radical is exact. Same radical heads 欢 joyous, 欲 desire, 歇 to rest, 次 next — the breath-and-mouth family.

phonetic

哥 gē

elder brother (here phonetic)

Left side 哥 supplies an exact phonetic match: gē → gē, no drift. 哥 itself is two stacked 可, the same can/may phonetic doubled — and that 可 already gave 河, 何, 歌. So 歌 keeps the deep 可-family vowel. The doubled mouth above also faintly suggests singing voices.