interjection #24,533

Meanings

  1. 1 hey!
  2. 2 wow!
  3. 3 ugh!

Examples

HSK 1
Yē! Nǐ zěnme lái zhèlǐ le?
Hey! What are you doing here?
HSK 3
Yē, zhège dōngxi zhēnde hěn qíguài!
Wow, this thing is really strange!

Tips

culture
is especially common in Cantonese-influenced Mandarin and in Hong Kong pop culture. It carries a tone of surprised exclamation - similar to 'yikes', 'whoa', or 'ew' depending on context.

Components

radical
kǒu
mouth
Left mouth radical - pictograph of an open mouth, the indexing element. Marks as a vocal sound: an interjection of surprise, alarm or disgust, like English 'oof' or 'yikes.' The mouth radical anchors most exclamations in Chinese - , , , , all share this left-side mouth.
phonetic
also
Right supplies the sound, drifting yě to yē with vowel and tone change. Pure phonetic. Same phonetic in , , , , - the entire yě/tā/dì family clusters around this hook-shaped graph. stays rare, mostly in modern internet speech and translated comics.

No stroke data for ; the glyph shown is your device font, so component strokes can't be highlighted.

Stroke Order