Meaning & readings
other, another, the others
Origin
The character 他 combines a person radical on the left (亻), which marks that this character relates to people, with a sound component on the right (也) that hints at its pronunciation. The left side tells you the basic category—it's about people—while the right side gives a phonetic clue to how the character should sound. Together, the shape came to mean "other person" or "another," extending naturally to the broader sense of "other" or "the others."
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 亻
- 也
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 5
- Kangxi radical
- 9
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #543 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+04ED6