Same building blocks, different characters: How component placement changes meaning in Chinese

Categories: Chinese

Chinese character components are usually placed in predictable ways. If you remember the components, you can often write the character.

But not always! Some characters share components but differ only in how they’re arranged.

These characters can be hard to remember and easy to mix up, and it might even be happening without you realising it.

You think your memory just slipped, and you mixed up the order of the components in 忙, writing it as 忘, but both these are common characters: máng, “busy”, and wàng, “to forget”, respectively.

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#269).

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How to learn and remember Chinese characters: My best advice

Before we dig into character components and their placement, I want to talk about something more important. If you’re not already quite familiar with Chinese characters, you might want to explore these strategies first, as they will make Chinese characters easier to learn:

Learn how Chinese characters work. This will make learning individual characters much easier. For example, understanding how functional components work, especially phonetic components, is immensely helpful. If this is the first time you hear about this, I suggest you check out my series starting with this article: The building blocks of Chinese, part 1: Chinese characters and words in a nutshell.
Employ mnemonics, if not for all characters, then at least those you struggle with. These are clever memory techniques that rely on how we remember things to create memorable associations, such as between components in a compound character.
Use flashcards and spaced repetition software. This shouldn’t take up a large chunk of your study time, but making sure you remember what you have previously learnt is important, and flashcards and spaced repetition are the most efficient way to do it, especially when it comes to learning Chinese characters.

I’ve summarised everything here: My best advice on how to learn Chinese characters

My best advice on how to learn Chinese characters

Component placement in Chinese characters is often predictable

In this article, we’re going to talk about component placement within compounds. First, we’ll look at some easy cases, then things will become gradually more complicated before we discuss what to do about all this as a student.

As a beginner, you might need to memorise that 艹, “grass”, goes at the top of 花, “flower”, but you will soon realise that 艹 always goes at the top (if not, it is written 艸). Similarly, 扌, “hand”, always appears on the left (otherwise it is written 手), as do many other squeezed variants of characters, such as 氵 (variant of 水), “water”, and 亻 (variant of 人), “person”.

You cannot perfectly predict if it is 扌 on the left or 手 somewhere else, or if it is 艹 at the top or 艸 somewhere else. For example, when writing 打 (dǎ), “to hit”, there is no other character that has any variant of 手 above 丁 or vice versa. When you have seen 打 a few times, you will be okay.

Usually, but not always, the left component gives meaning, and the right component gives sound.

Some character components don’t follow a simple rule

This is not always straightforward. 鸟/鳥 (niǎo), “bird”, can, for example, appear on the right, left or top of another component, even if the right is much more common. It’s a meaning component in all these characters, so there’s no clue which is the correct version.

On the right:
- 鹅 (é), “goose”
- 鸽 (gē), “pigeon”
- 鸭 (yā), “duck”
On the bottom:
- 鹰 (yīng), “eagle”
- 鸳 (yuān), “mandarin duck”
- 鸯 (yāng), “mandarin duck”
On the left:
- 鸵 (tuó), “ostrich”

Then there are cases which make sense only if you dig a little bit deeper, such as 阝 representing different components that mean different things depending on which side it appears:

阝 (right) derived from 邑 (yì), “city” or “settlement”
阝 (left) derived from 阜 (fù), “mound” or “hill”

Here, you know where to write which component simply by knowing what it means. If you struggle, use mnemonics!

Without knowing what the component means, you’ll have to rely on truly massive amounts of exposure to feel what is right.

Different variants of the same character, not different characters

Finally, in some cases, there are variants of the same character (same pronunciation, same meaning) that differ only in component placement. For example:

够 (gòu), “enough”, in simplified is written with the 多 on the right
夠 (gòu), “enough”, in traditional is written with the 多 on the left

These are the same characters, which is not what I want to talk about in the rest of this article. Instead, I want to focus on different characters that differ only in that they have swapped the positions of components.

Same building blocks, different characters

Here is a list of Chinese characters that have the same components but are arranged differently. Note that these characters are not variants of each other; they are different characters, usually with completely different meanings and pronunciations:

忘 (wàng), “forget, neglect” – 忙 (máng), “busy”
摸 (mō), “caress, touch” – 摹 (mó), “copy, trace”
呆 (dāi), “dull, stupid” – 杏 (xìng), “almond, apricot”
忠 (zhōng), “loyal” – 忡 (chōng), “grieved”
召 (zhào), “convene, summon” – 叨 (dāo), “talkative”
含 (hán), “contain” – 吟 (yín), “chant, recite”
唯 (wéi), “only” – 售 (shòu), “sell”
怐 (yí), “joyful, happy” – 怠 (dài), “idle, slack”
愀 (qiǎo), “to become stern or displeased” – 愁 (chóu), “to be anxious, worry”
枒 (gǎo), “brilliant, bright sun” – 枓 (yǎo), “distant, out of sight”
啼 (tí), “weep, caw” – 啻 (chì), “merely”
帛 (bó), “silk, fabrics” – 帕 (pà), “kerchief”
某 (mǒu), “certain person or thing” – 柑 (gān), “tangerine”
案 (àn), “case, table” – 桉 (ān), “eucalyptus”
皇 (huáng), “emperor” – 珀 (pò), “amber”
眇 (miǎo), “minute, blind” – 省 (shěng/xǐng), “save, province”
音 (yīn), “sound” – 昱 (yù), “bright”

There are also some that are only relevant in simplified Chinese:

机 (jī), “crucial point, engine” – 朵 (duǒ), “measure word for flowers”
垦 (kěn), “cultivate” – 垠 (yín), “limit”
吴 (wú), “a surname” – 吞 (tūn), “swallow”
庄 (zhuāng), “village” – 圹 (kuàng), “tomb”

There are also a few cases where three characters can be formed with the same building blocks arranged differently:

翋 (là), “flying” – 翊 (yì), “assist, help, flying” – 翌 (yì), “daybreak, the next day”
另 (lìng), “another” – 加 (jiā), “add” – 叻 (lè), “used for sound transcription”
旭 (xù), “brilliant, rising sun” – 旮 (gā), “corner, nook” – 旯 (lá), “corner, nook”

This list started with my own observations over a few years and was then expanded by helpful people in the comment section (thanks to Andy and Els). If you have found more examples, please leave a comment.

How to deal with component placement when learning characters

As established earlier, most of the time you do not need to take component placement into consideration when memorising characters, except as a beginner. You simply would not write 打 with the hand at the top, or 你 with the person on the right.

The reason is that it just looks wrong. You have never seen these components in a compound with any other placement, so it is not an issue.

Some of the characters discussed in this article are different, however, and can cause confusion even for more advanced students. They only become a problem when you encounter two or more from each set, which in most cases only starts happening once you have learnt a few thousand characters.

There are exceptions where both characters are rather common, such as 忙 (máng), “busy”, and 忘 (wàng), “forget, neglect”, but in cases like 音 (yīn), “sound”, and 昱 (yù), “bright”, the former is 200 times more common. So by the time you encounter the latter, you will not mix them up either.

Use mnemonics only if you really have to

In general, keep things simple. As I have already said, most of the time, no action is required. I have never confused 忙 and 忘, and didn’t even think about the fact that they share the same components until very recently.

Still, some cases really are confusing, including some of those with the same components, but also the unpredictable ones, especially 鸟/鳥. If it’s important for you to be able to recall the relative position of these components, incorporate direction in the mnemonic you use (the bird swooping in from above, being squished underneath or flying in from the side).

For example: 呆 (dāi), “dull, stupid” – 杏 (xìng), “almond, apricot”: 呆 originally showed something completely different (a person carrying a child), so feel free to make something up. How about a stupid person perched at the top of a tree with their mouth hanging open? For 杏, someone lying beneath an apricot tree with fruits falling directly into their mouths.

As argued elsewhere, there is little point in doing this just because you can. Don’t use mnemonics to remember things you don’t need to remember. Will native speakers care if you write 夠 instead of 够? Will they misunderstand if you write 鸭 with 甲 on the right of 鸟? Unlikely.

Don’t use mnemonics for everything when learning Chinese

Still, for many students, these things matter. I, for example, wrote this article because I wanted to get some of these characters right. I had subconsciously been mixing them up for a while and finally noticed that they were different characters with the same components!

Editor’s note: This article, originally published in 2016, was rewritten and republished in September 2025.