wèn
verb HSK 1 #201

Meanings

  1. 1 to ask
  2. 2 to inquire

Characters

Mouth radical inside a door — asking is like opening a door with your mouth.

Examples

Wǒ wèn nǐ yí ge wèntí.
Let me ask you a question.
Nǐ qù wèn lǎoshī ba.
Go ask the teacher.
Tā wèn wǒ jiào shénme míngzi.
He asked me what my name is.

Tips

history
The traditional character has (mouth) inside (door) — asking questions at someone's door. A vivid way to remember it.

Components

radical
mén
door; gate
Outer — the gate radical (simplified from in 1956), indexing radical for . Pictographically a pair of doors hinged on either side. The traditional was filed under (mouth), but the simplified character is indexed under . Supplies the sound too (mén → wèn, an old labial-initial shift visible across the men/wen pair, e.g. ).
semantic
kǒu
mouth
Inner — the mouth doing the asking. Together with the gate above the picture is famously evocative: a mouth at someone's door, calling out a question. Same speech-action found in , , , — but here it is the semantic core rather than the indexing radical, since took over indexing in the simplified form.

Stroke Order

wèn