What does 你 mean in Chinese?

你 (nǐ) means "you" in Chinese. The new HSK exam expects you to recognise it at HSK 1.

How do you write 你?

你 is written with 7 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 你?

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

How many strokes does 你 have?

The Chinese character 你 has 7 strokes.

What HSK level is 你?

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

你 (nǐ): Meaning, Stroke Order, Radical & Examples

你

nǐ

you

HSK 1 character 7 strokes Radical: 亻 (person)

Quick Answer

你 (nǐ) means "you" with 7 strokes, radical 亻 (person), HSK 1 on the new exam.

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

Pronunciation

nǐ

Meaning

Primary: you

Etymology

Oracle-bone origin

你 does not appear in oracle-bone or bronze inscriptions as such. It is a later variant of 爾 (ěr), the classical second-person pronoun, with the 亻 (person) radical added to specify a human referent. The right-hand 尔 is a simplified form of 爾, which in seal script depicted an ornate woven or latticed object whose exact referent is debated.

Form evolution

Because 你 is a post-classical coinage, it has no oracle-bone or bronze form. It emerges in popular writing roughly in the Tang and Song periods as scribes began distinguishing the pronoun use of 爾 by prefixing 亻. The right component 尔 is itself a drastic clerical-era simplification of the tangled seal-script 爾, keeping only the top and bottom outline.

How the meaning evolved

The older pronoun 爾 covered 'you' (singular and plural) and also functioned as a demonstrative 'that' and a suffix in classical Chinese. When 你 split off, it narrowed to the colloquial singular second-person pronoun, leaving 爾 to fossilise in literary contexts. Modern Mandarin uses 你 for informal 'you' and 您 (nín) as the respectful form.

Cultural note

The plural 你们 (nǐmen) is a modern formation with the pluralising suffix 们; classical Chinese had no obligatory number marking on pronouns. Learners often mix up 你 and 妳 (the feminine 'you' used in some Taiwan and Hong Kong writing), but 妳 is a 20th-century coinage on the model of 他/她.