漢字Kanji · in Time & Sequence
千: thousand
丿 and 十 carry the meaning
Oracle bone · Shang Today
Oracle bone: Wikimedia Commons, traced from Academia Sinica, CC0. Today’s form: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Two readings, and the words that use each
センsen · on'yomi · in compounds
- 千せん1000
- 三千さんぜん3000
- 八千はっせん8000
- 四千よんせんfour thousand; 4,000
- 千里せんり1000 ri; (a) long distance
ちchi · kun'yomi · on its own
- 千切れるちぎれるbe torn off
- 千鳥ちどりplover
- 千代ちよthousand years; thousand generations
Words: Kanji alive, CC BY 4.0 · JMdict, EDRDG, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where it comes from
Origin · sourced
Phono-semantic compound (形聲)一 one, signifying a number (meaning) + 人 (sound)
The Old Chinese pronunciations of 千 and 人 were similar. For the component 人, compare its combining form 亻.
Source: Wiktionary, 千 (rev. 92199568), CC BY-SA 4.0
Memory story · made up to help you remember
“Reach the finish line! This radical represents the number ten and the profound sense of arrival and completeness it brings.”
Connections
Easy to confuse
The difference, side by sideIn ChineseSame character in simplified and traditional · qiān
Same form: 千 is written the same way in mainland China (simplified) and in Taiwan and Hong Kong (traditional).
- Simplified
- 千 mainland China, Singapore
- Traditional
- 千 Taiwan, Hong Kong
Pinyin qiān most common reading
Forms and pinyin: Unicode Unihan database (Unicode License v3). Pinyin lists the most common reading, not every reading.