What does 他 mean in Chinese?

他 (tā) means "he, him" in Chinese. The new HSK exam expects you to recognise it at HSK 1.

How do you write 他?

他 is written with 5 strokes, starting from the 亻 (person) radical and following standard Chinese stroke order (top to bottom, left to right). See the interactive stroke-order tool for the full animation.

What is the radical of 他?

The radical of 他 is 亻 (person, Kangxi radical #9). Other common HSK characters using the same radical include 作, 保, 体, 信.

How many strokes does 他 have?

The Chinese character 他 has 5 strokes.

What HSK level is 他?

On the new HSK exam syllabus, 他 is a character to recognise at HSK 1 and to write by hand at HSK 2 (the handwriting list HSK 1 and 2 share).

他 (tā): Meaning, Stroke Order, Radical & Examples

他

tā

he, him

HSK 1 character 5 strokes Radical: 亻 (person)

Quick Answer

他 (tā) means "he, him" with 5 strokes, radical 亻 (person), HSK 1 on the new exam.

Full dictionary entry for 他 →Animated stroke-order for 他 →

Pronunciation

tā

Meaning

Primary: he

Other meanings:

Etymology

Oracle-bone origin

他 has no oracle-bone form because it did not exist as a third-person pronoun in early Chinese; Classical Chinese used 其, 之, or 彼 for that role. The graph is a later phono-semantic compound built from 亻 (person radical) for meaning and 也 for sound, originally written 它 and used for 'other' or 'another'. The dedicated pronoun use is a medieval development.

Form evolution

The component 也 was pictographically a snake in oracle bone and bronze script, later repurposed as a purely phonetic element. 他 in its pronoun role appears in Tang-era vernacular texts, written with the 亻 radical to distinguish the human reference from 它 (thing) and 她 (she, a twentieth-century coinage). The modern form has been stable since the clerical reform.

How the meaning evolved

Early 他 meant simply 'other' or 'another', as still seen in 其他 (other) and 他人 (other people). During the Tang and Song dynasties it drifted into general third-person pronoun use covering he, she, and it. The gendered split into 他/她/它 was engineered by the May Fourth generation in the 1910s and 20s, following European pronoun models.

Cultural note

Because 她 is a modern invention, pre-1920 texts use 他 for women as well, which sometimes surprises learners reading early Republican fiction. In speech all three characters are pronounced tā identically, so the distinction is purely orthographic and vanishes in conversation.

Mnemonic

A person who is also there — him

Decomposition

他=亻radical+也component

Breaking a character into its components makes it far easier to recall. Each component above links to its own detail page.

Basic info

Pinyin	tā
Meanings	he, him
Stroke count	5 strokes
Radical	亻 (#9: person)
New HSK exam	Recognise at HSK 1, write by hand at HSK 1-2
Frequency	#1009 most common