谁

誰

shéi

pronoun HSK 1 #78

Meanings

1 who
2 whom

Characters

谁

shéi

who; whom

讠 (speech) + 隹 (short-tailed bird) — asking 'who said that?'

Examples

你是谁？

Nǐ shì shéi?

Who are you?

谁想去？

Shéi xiǎng qù?

Who wants to go?

这是谁的书？

Zhè shì shéi de shū?

Whose book is this?

Tips

grammar

In Chinese, question words like 谁 stay in the same position as the answer would. 谁来了？ (Who came?) → 他来了。 (He came.) No word-order change needed.

usage

Both shéi and shuí are accepted pronunciations. shéi is more common in everyday speech.

Components

radical

讠 yán

speech (left-side form of 言)

Speech radical — 讠 is the simplified left-side form of 言 (word). Asking 'who?' is a speech act, which is why 谁 sits next to 说 (say), 话 (talk), 请 (request) under this radical. The radical signals 'this character is something you do with your mouth in conversation'.

phonetic

隹 zhuī

short-tailed bird (here phonetic)

Right component is the short-tailed bird, here borrowed purely for sound: zhuī drifted to shéi/shuí. The bird-meaning is dormant. 隹 also pulls phonetic duty in 谆 and the related 推, 唯 family — a wide cluster where the original bird-sound has scattered into different rimes.

Stroke Order

谁 shéi

谁