呔 (dāi): hey! (sharp shout to grab atten…

Meanings

1 hey! (sharp shout to grab attention)
2 (also tǎi) marked by a non-local accent

Characters

呔

dāi

hey! (interjection)

Examples

HSK 2

呔！站住！

Dāi! Zhànzhù!

Hey! Stop right there!

HSK 2

他说话有点儿呔。

Tā shuōhuà yǒudiǎnr tǎi.

His speech has a bit of an out-of-town accent.

Tips

register

呔 is a stagey, almost theatrical attention-grabber - you'll mostly meet it in classical novels, opera, and 武侠 fiction, e.g. 《说岳全传》: '呔，狗奴!' Modern speakers say 喂 or 嘿 instead. The second reading 呔 is northern dialect for 'speaking with a foreign/non-local accent'.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Mouth radical on the left flags 呔 as a vocal outburst - like 啊, 嘿, 喂, 唉, the mouth marker is the standard way Chinese spells shouted interjections. Without 口 the character would just be 太 'too / very'; adding the mouth turns it into a sharp bark used to grab attention or stop someone in their tracks.

phonetic

太 tài

too; very

Right side 太 supplies the sound - tài shifting to dāi via the regular dental t/d alternation. The interjection sense is purely phonetic; 太's own meaning of 'great, excessive' has no role here. The same mouth-plus-loud-sound pattern fills out the inventory of shouted bursts in 哎, 嘿 and 喂.