课程 → Level 8 · 汉字与语音 → 课 5
Level 8 · Lesson 5 形声（一）：形旁
Phono-semantic characters 1: the meaning part
形声字的一半表示意义，这一半叫形旁；看懂形旁，生字也能猜出大方向。
Half of a phono-semantic character marks its field of meaning — that half is the 形旁.
你已经会了 · You already know this
回头看你第一级、第二级就会说的三句话：请进、我洗手、我们吃饭。里面的 请、洗、饭 三个字，左边分别是言字旁、三点水、食字旁——说话、水、吃的。右边呢？青、先、反，管的是读音。前面三课讲的象形、指事、会意加起来还不到汉字的十分之一，今天开始讲的这一类却占了百分之八十以上。
Look again at three sentences you have said since level 1: 请进, 我洗手, 我们吃饭. The left halves of 请, 洗 and 饭 are 讠 speech, 氵 water and 饣 food — exactly the field each word belongs to. The right halves (青, 先, 反) are there for the sound. Pictographs, indicatives and compound ideographs together are a small minority of characters. This fifth category is the overwhelming majority.
规则 · The rules
「形」指形体、意义，「声」指声音、读音，一个字里两样都有，所以叫形声。会意字得想出一幅画，形声字不用：语言里出现一个新词，取一个表示类别的部件，再找一个同音的字，新字就成了。这个办法太方便，所以两千年来的汉字大部分是这么造出来的。
形 is shape and meaning, 声 is sound; a character holding both is a 形声字. A compound ideograph needs someone to think up a picture, and pictures run out. This method never does: a new word appears, you take a component for its field, add a character that already sounds right, and the graph exists. That is why it swallowed the writing system.
形旁多半在左边（河、情、请），也可以在上边（花、草）、在下边（想、忘）、在外边（园）。位置不完全固定，可是每个形旁自己的位置差不多是固定的：三点水永远在左，草字头永远在上，所以你不用在一个字里到处乱找。
Left is the commonest slot but not the only one: 花 carries 艹 on top, 想 carries 心 underneath, 园 carries 囗 all the way round. The system is loose overall and tight per component — 氵 is always on the left, 艹 is always on top — so you never have to hunt across the whole character.
所以遇到不认识的字，第一步是找形旁，第二步是回到句子里。「他在河边等我」——就算 河 不认识，三点水加上「边」，你也知道说的是水。要小心的是：形旁记的是古人的分类，不一定是今天的。钟 有金字旁，因为古代的钟是铜做的；猫 有反犬旁，那一旁管的是走兽，不只是狗。
So the method is two steps: find the meaning part, then go back to the sentence. Even if 河 is new to you, water plus 边 in 他在河边等我 tells you enough to keep reading. One caution: the meaning part records an ancient classification, not a modern one. 钟 takes the metal part because bells were cast in bronze; 猫 takes 犭, which covers four-footed animals in general and not only dogs.
一步一步 · Step by step
- 河 — the character to be analysed
- 氵 + 可 — split it left and right — the usual first cut
- 氵（形旁） — field: water — 河, 海, 洗, 江, 湖
- 可（声旁） — the sound half, taken up in the next lesson
- 河 = a watercourse — 形旁 fixes the class, 声旁 points at the reading
- 铜 → 钅 + 同 — split it left and right, the same way
- 钅（形旁） — field: metal — 铜, 银, 钱, 铁
- 同（声旁） — this time the hint is exact: 同 tóng, 铜 tóng
- 铜 = copper — one guess for the field, one for the sound, both good