After learning the language knowledge about the Chinese character radicals, foreign students may move their attention to a series of characters with the same radicals during the period when they learn Mandarin Chinese. Let‘s take 耳as an example which belongs to a pictographic character. In order to know more about the characters with 耳, we divide it into several groups to explain from the function and theory of constitution.

The first group of characters is the phonetic characters 闻、聋、聩、聆、耵and聍 whose meaning element is 耳, making all of them have relationship with ear. To be specific, 闻means to hear and 聋means fail to hear. 聩 carries the meaning of hard of hearing and聆 is to listen to. When we combine the last two character together as 耵聍, it means earwax. We can see the meanings of all the words mentioned above are closely related to the radical 耳, meaning ear.

The second group is only the character 聪 which is also a phonetic character with the meaning indicator of 耳. The original meaning of 聪is sense of hearing which is also contained in the written form of modernChinese language such as 失聪 and耳聪目明. However, when you attend to one-on-one Mandarin leaning programs, Chinese teachers would tell you that the common meaning of 聪in modern Chinese is similar to “clever” like 聪明、聪慧and聪敏. In this case, this character has no relation with 耳.

Let‘s move our attention to another group of characters 取，聊，耸，耽，职and聘, the first one of which is an associative character while the left are all phonetic characters. Even though the original meanings of all of the six characters are related to 耳, the modern meanings are changed. The original meaning of 取is to cut the left ear but it means to take or to get something in modern Chinese language.

Another group of characters with 耳that you should pay attention to are 洱，饵and珥. In this group, 耳is the phonetic indicator and 耳in the former two only indicates the sound without indicating meaning. The original meaning of 珥is the earrings made up of pearls or jade. And 耳indicates both sound and meaning in this character.