然

Translingual

Stroke order

Stroke order

Etymology

Phono-semantic compound (形聲): phonetic 肰 + semantic 火 (“fire”)

Note that the upper left component is analyzed as 肉 (meat), and in the character 肰 (used as phonetic) is drawn as 月 (moon), but in 然 this is distorted (tilted), looking more like 夕 (evening), with an extra stroke; compare 祭, 將.

Han character

然 (radical 86 火+8, 12 strokes, cangjie input 月大火 (BKF), four-corner 2333₃)

1. yes, certainly
2. pledge, promise
3. (archaic) to agree; to endorse; to approve
4. (archaic) but

Derived characters

• 燃, 橪, 㒄, 撚, 㜣, 繎, 嘫

References

• KangXi: page 675, character 12
• Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 19149
• Dae Jaweon: page 1086, character 20
• Hanyu Da Zidian: volume 3, page 2213, character 5
• Unihan data for U+7136

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Cantonese

Hanzi

然 (Yale yin4)

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Japanese

Kanji

然 (grade 4 “Kyōiku” kanji)

Readings

• On: ぜん (zen), ねん (nen)
• Kun: もえる (moeru), しかれども (shikaredomo), しかして (shikashite)

Compounds

偶然

全然

突然

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Korean

Hanja

然 (hangeul 연, revised yeon, McCune-Reischauer yŏn, Yale yen)

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Mandarin

Hanzi

然 (pinyin rán (ran2), Wade-Giles jan²)

Compounds

• 然而 (rán'ér)
• 然后 (ránhòu)
• 然顷 (ránqǐng)
• 然则 (ránzé)
• 昂然 (ángrán)
• 必然 (bìrán)
• 当然 (dāngrán)
• 忽然 (hūrán)
• 慨然 (kǎirán)
• 偶然 (ǒurán)
• 全然 (quánrán)
• 虽然 (suīrán)
• 突然 (tūrán)
• 欣然 (xīnrán)
• 自然 (zìrán)

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Vietnamese

Han character

然 (nhiên, nhen, nhơn)