What does 谁 mean in Chinese?

谁 (shéi) means "who" in Chinese. The new HSK exam expects you to recognise it at HSK 1.

How do you write 谁?

谁 is written with 10 strokes, starting from the 讠 (speech) 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 谁?

The radical of 谁 is 讠 (speech, Kangxi radical #149). Other common HSK characters using the same radical include 话, 说, 认, 读.

How many strokes does 谁 have?

The Chinese character 谁 has 10 strokes.

What HSK level is 谁?

On the new HSK exam syllabus, 谁 is a character to recognise at HSK 1.

谁 (shéi): Meaning, Stroke Order, Radical & Examples

谁

shéi

who

HSK 1 character 10 strokes Radical: 讠 (speech)

Quick Answer

谁 (shéi) means "who" with 10 strokes, radical 讠 (speech), HSK 1 on the new exam.

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

Pronunciation

shéi

Meaning

Primary: who

Etymology

Oracle-bone origin

谁 (traditional 誰) is a phono-semantic compound and has no oracle-bone origin as an interrogative. It pairs 言 (speech) with 隹 (zhuī), the pictograph of a short-tailed bird that does appear in oracle bone script as a clear side-view of a bird with beak, body, and legs. Here 隹 functions purely as the phonetic, carrying the older reading that eventually shifted to shéi/shuí.

Form evolution

In seal script the character shows 言 on the left and a stylised 隹 on the right with visible bird-head and wing strokes. Clerical script regularised 隹 into the eight-stroke form with its characteristic four horizontal lines on the right side. The simplified 谁 only swaps 言 for 讠, leaving 隹 unchanged, and the bird origin of the right component is no longer visible to a modern reader.

How the meaning evolved

From its earliest attestations in the Book of Documents and the Analects, 谁 has functioned as the interrogative pronoun 'who'. There is no evidence of a separate earlier meaning that shifted: the phonetic loan of 隹 produced the word, and the word has meant 'who' throughout recorded Chinese. The reading split between shéi (colloquial) and shuí (literary/formal) developed much later and both remain standard.

Cultural note

The line 谁知盘中餐,粒粒皆辛苦 ('Who knows that each grain in the bowl is the fruit of toil?') from Li Shen's Tang-era poem is memorised by every Chinese schoolchild and is the most famous use of 谁 in the language. Learners often pick one pronunciation and stick with it, but native speakers freely switch between shéi and shuí depending on register.