The speech radical 言

Read yán, 7 strokes. Written 讠 as a component in modern simplified characters. It indexes 75 distinct HSK characters.

75HSK characters

7Strokes

#149Radical number

讠Written form

Quick answer

What does the speech radical (言) mean, and which characters use it?

Speech (言, yán) is Kangxi radical 149, and it usually marks a character whose meaning is connected to speech. 75 distinct HSK characters are filed under it, the most common being 说, 话, 言. When you meet a new character carrying 讠, expect its sense to touch speech and let the other component hint at the sound.

How this radical works inside a character

Most characters built on 言 follow the meaning-plus-sound pattern: 言 sits on one side to signal the speech sense, and a second component supplies the approximate pronunciation. So you are rarely memorizing a whole new shape, you are recognizing speech plus a part you may already read. The list below is in corpus-frequency order, so the characters you will actually meet first are at the top: learn them in this order and the rest of the speech-radical family gets easier as you go.

All 75 speech characters 75 characters

#	Char	Pīnyīn	Strokes	HSK 3.0	HSK 2.0
1	说	shuō	9	1	1
2	话	huà	8	1	1
3	言	yán	7	2	4
4	调	diào	10	3	3
5	语	yǔ	9	1	1
6	论	lùn	6	2	4
7	证	zhèng	7	3	4
8	记	jì	5	1	3
9	计	jì	4	2	4
10	试	shì	8	1	2
11	认	rèn	4	1	1
12	议	yì	5	3	3
13	识	shí	7	1	1
14	请	qǐng	10	1	1
15	设	shè	6	3	5
16	谈	tán	10	3	4
17	课	kè	10	1	2
18	评	píng	7	3	4
19	读	dú	10	1	1
20	讨	tǎo	5	2	4
21	许	xǔ	6	2	4
22	讲	jiǎng	6	2	3
23	误	wù	9	3	4
24	诚	chéng	8	4	4
25	订	dìng	4	3	5
26	警	jǐng	19	3	4
27	诉	sù	7	1	2
28	访	fǎng	6	3	4
29	诊	zhěn	7	5	5
30	词	cí	7	2	3
31	谋	móu	11	6	6
32	让	ràng	5	2	2
33	训	xùn	5	3	5
34	誉	yù	13	6	5
35	诈	zhà	7	7-9	6
36	诱	yòu	9	7-9	6
37	谜	mí	11	7-9	5
38	谢	xiè	12	1	1
39	详	xiáng	8	5	4
40	诞	dàn	8	6	6
41	谎	huǎng	11	7-9	6
42	该	gāi	8	2	3
43	诗	shī	8	4	5
44	谓	wèi	11	4	5
45	询	xún	8	5	5
46	谊	yì	10	5	4
47	讯	xùn	5	6	5
48	诸	zhū	10	6	6
49	谅	liàng	10	6	4
50	诀	jué	6	7-9	·
51	谱	pǔ	14	7-9	6
52	谁	shéi	10	1	1
53	译	yì	7	4	4
54	诺	nuò	10	6	6
55	谦	qiān	12	6	5
56	诧	chà	8	7-9	6
57	诵	sòng	9	7-9	6
58	谨	jǐn	13	7-9	5
59	誓	shì	14	7-9	6
60	譬	pì	20	7-9	6
61	谐	xié	11	6	6
62	讥	jī	4	7-9	6
63	讳	huì	6	7-9	6
64	讶	yà	6	7-9	6
65	讹	é	6	7-9	·
66	讼	sòng	6	7-9	6
67	讽	fěng	6	7-9	5
68	诫	jiè	9	7-9	6
69	诽	fěi	10	7-9	6
70	谍	dié	11	7-9	6
71	谣	yáo	12	7-9	6
72	谤	bàng	12	7-9	6
73	谬	miù	13	7-9	6
74	谴	qiǎn	15	7-9	6
75	诬	wū	9	·	6

tone 1 tone 2 tone 3 tone 4 neutral Order = corpus frequency, most common first · · = not in that scheme

Strokes and radical assignment come from the Unicode Han Database (Unicode 17.0.0, field kRSUnicode); the HSK levels and the frequency order are computed from the shipped HSK word lists. A small number of characters have a contested radical across dictionaries; the primary Unicode analysis is used throughout. Last verified 2026-07-24. See the full radical explorer or the characters-per-level reference.

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Drill the speech-radical characters on a schedule

This list is free to browse and self-test here, always. If you would rather practice recognizing these characters on your phone with spaced repetition, we recommend Wordbrush, our one disclosed pick. Never a gate on this page.

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