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谁

誰
shéi
pronoun HSK 1 #78

Meanings

  1. 1 who
  2. 2 whom

Characters

谁
shéi
who; whom
讠 (speech) + 隹 (short-tailed bird) - asking 'who said that?'

Examples

HSK 1
你是谁？
Nǐ shì shéi?
Who are you?
HSK 1
谁想去？
Shéi xiǎng qù?
Who wants to go?
HSK 1
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
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