The Chinese character 高
And its component form
高
gāo
- high
- tall
- above average
- loud
高 is both a character and a character component
高 can be used as a phonetic component in a Chinese character. You’ll find the Chinese character component 高 in characters and words pronounced “gao”.
These characters all contain 高 and sound like “gao”:
Characters that sound like “ao” with the Chinese character component 高
The Chinese language is over 5000 years old, so, unsurprisingly, some characters’ pronunciations have evolved a little over time. Chinese characters containing 高 will therefore sometimes have a pronunciation close to the sound 高 but not quite the same.
When used as a character component, 高 can also be found in words that don’t sound like “gao” but have a very close pronunciation. All these words share the “-ao” sound with a different inital:
Exceptions
You can find the character component 高 in these words that share the “-ao” sound:
髞 sào: high; imposing
敲 qiāo: to squat; to hit; to strike
犒 kào: to give a bonus to
You’ll also find the meaning component 高 in many other Chinese characters. Browse the full list here.
All 80,000+ Chinese characters share the same character components. Chinese character components are therefore essential for Chinese learners: they are the building blocks of Chinese. Chinese character components help tremendously with understanding a character: they provide information on its meaning or on its pronunciation. In short, knowing character components will help you analyse, learn and remember each Chinese character much better.
Join us on Ninchanese as we teach you everything about the Chinese character components you need to know, little by little.