我

wǒ
pronoun HSK 1 #2

Meanings

  1. 1 I
  2. 2 me

Characters

Examples

HSK 1
Wǒ shì Zhōngguó rén.
I am Chinese.
HSK 1
Nǐ rènshi wǒ ma?
Do you know me?
HSK 1
Wǒ jiào Xiǎo Míng.
My name is Xiao Ming.

Tips

grammar
我 serves as 'I,' 'me,' and (with 的) 'my': 我的书 (my book). In casual speech 的 is often dropped for close relationships: 我妈妈 (my mom).
history
The ancient form of 我 depicted a hand holding a weapon - 'the one who holds the weapon' was used to represent the self.

Components

radical
戈 gē
dagger-axe; halberd
Right indexing dagger-axe radical - the weapon being gripped. Its strokes interleave with the hand on the left (the long horizontal-and-hook plus the slash and dot intermix with the hand strokes). Originally 我 named the serrated halberd itself; the pronoun reading 'I/me' is an ancient phonetic borrowing. Same weapon radical anchors 战 (war), 戎 (military), 戍 (garrison).
semantic
扌 shǒu
hand (radical form)
The hand-radical strokes interleave with the dagger-axe on the right, depicting a hand gripping the weapon. Originally 我 was a pictograph of a saw-toothed dagger-axe held by a hand - 'the weapon-holder' was loaned phonetically as the first-person pronoun. The hand component preserves the grip, scattered across non-contiguous strokes because the weapon and hand are intertwined in the glyph.

Stroke Order

我 wǒ