燕 (yàn): swallow (bird)

Measure Word

一只燕 zhī

Meanings

1 swallow (bird)
2 Yan (ancient vassal state in present-day Hebei/Liaoning)
3 a surname

Characters

燕

yàn

swallow (bird)

Examples

HSK 2

春天来了，燕子飞回来了。

Chūntiān lái le, yànzi fēi huílái le.

Spring is here, the swallows have flown back.

HSK 6

燕国是战国七雄之一。

Yān guó shì Zhànguó Qī xióng zhīyī.

The State of Yan was one of the Seven Warring States.

Tips

mistakes

燕 has two pronunciations: yàn (swallow bird) and Yān (the ancient state and surname). 燕子 (swallow) vs 燕国 (State of Yan).

culture

Swallows nesting under the eaves is a traditional symbol of good fortune in Chinese culture. The return of swallows marks the arrival of spring.

Components

radical

灬 huǒ

fire (bottom-form variant)

Bottom 灬 - the four-dot bottom form of 火, but here it isn't fire at all. The dots are a graphic substitute for the swallow's forked tail feathers, an accidental homophony of shape that lets 燕 share an indexing radical with cooking characters like 煮 and 蒸. Etymologically the dots are tail; positionally they index as the fire radical.

pictograph

廿 niàn

twenty; flat shape (here pictographic head)

Top 廿 - visually the number twenty, but in 燕 it has nothing to do with counting. It is a graphic stand-in for the swallow's small flat head and pointed beak, the topmost slice of the original bird pictograph that gave rise to the modern character.

pictograph

口 kǒu

mouth; opening

Middle 口 - not a literal mouth here, but the stylised body of the swallow seen from below. The whole top stack 廿+口 traces the bird's head and belly fused into one silhouette; the original oracle-bone graph showed a swallow in flight with wings spread.

pictograph

北 běi

north; back-to-back figures

Middle-bottom 北 - depicting the swallow's two outstretched wings, beating away from the body. 北 is itself a pictograph of two people back-to-back; reused here purely for its winged shape, a happy coincidence between two unrelated graphs.