们men

们

Hover to feel · click to explore

Simplified · Today

繁体

Traditional Chinese

們 (men), the traditional plural marker, adds the door radical 門 to the person radical 亻 — the combination evokes a crowd passing through together, a visual metaphor for "us" that has remained unchanged since the Song dynasty. It follows pronouns and nouns alike: 我們, 你們, 他們, 人們, all carrying the same meaning of plurality into the modern age.

← → navigate · swipe on mobile

Shuowen

Men (们) is a phonosemantic character: the left part is the radical 人 (person) signalling that the character concerns a group of people, while the right part is the simplified form of 門 (mén), originally a pictogram of a double door used here for its phonetic value. In oracle bone and later bronze inscriptions the phonetic component 門 was combined with the person radical to denote a plurality of persons, eventually becoming the plural suffix for pronouns such as 我们, 你们 and 他们. The composition thus reflects both the sound (門) and the semantic field (人), explaining why 们 is written with a person beside a door.

Pinyin

men· HSK 1· Radical 人

们men

Character evolution

Shuowen

Pinyin