母 mǔ
- Strokes
- 5
- Radical
- 母 — mother
- How it's built
- Ideograph — the meaning is built from its parts
母语
mǔyǔ
mother tongue
Characters in this word
语 yǔ
- Strokes
- 9
- Radical
- 讠 — words, speech
- Made of
- 讠 words, speech 吾 I, my, our
- How it's built
- Phono-semantic — one part hints at the meaning, another at the sound
Example phrases
- 对他来说，汉语不是母语，但他已经说得很流利了。 Duì tā lái shuō, Hànyǔ bú shì mǔyǔ, dàn tā yǐjīng shuō de hěn liúlì le. For him, Chinese is not his mother tongue, but he already speaks it very fluently.
- 他的母语是西班牙语，也会说一点汉语。 Tā de mǔyǔ shì Xībānyáyǔ, yě huì shuō yìdiǎn Hànyǔ. His mother tongue is Spanish, and he can speak a little Chinese too.
- 用母语写文章比用外语快得多。 Yòng mǔyǔ xiě wénzhāng bǐ yòng wàiyǔ kuài de duō. Writing in your mother tongue is much faster than in a foreign language.