谷 gû (7 strokes)
甲 金 篆 隶 楷
The word 谷 means ‘valley’. Its ancient character has two parts. The top part depicts half of the character for 水 (shuî, ‘water’) and represents water fl owing from a mountain stream. The bottom part 口 (kôu, ‘mouth’) represents the opening of a valley leading to a plain.
The word 谷 can be used in phrases, for example 谷底 (gû dî, ‘the bottom of the valley’), 山谷 (shän gû, ‘mountain valley’) and 大峡谷 (dà xiá gû, ‘the Grand Canyon’).
谷 can also be used as a component in word formation, as in 欲(yù, ‘wish’, ‘desire’) and 豁(huò, ‘open’). The word 谷 is also the simplified form of the conventional character 穀, meaning ‘cereal’, for example 五谷 (wû gû, ‘the fi ve cereals’) and 谷物 (gû wù, ‘grain’).
Idioms and phrases
谷地 gû dì
valley
谷类 gû lèi
cereal
谷子 gû zi
millet
河谷 hé gû
river valley
Try it!
The objective of this series is to provide a link between Chinese language and culture, so that learners will not only know the meanings of the characters, or the common phrases in which they appear, but also the cultural context of the characters. It is hoped that the series will motivate learners to take a keen interest in this language.
This series contains the most common 128 Chinese characters that will help both interested students and foreign learners to understand the Chinese language and mind. Although they are all ‘radicals’ 部首, the term has been deliberately avoided because it is rather technical. Instead, the term ‘component’ 偏旁 has been chosen in its place.
Most of the 128 characters can be used on their own to form phrases. A small number of them can only be used in word formation and almost never on their own.
The ancient characters are largely pictograms 象形, or picturewords, and are listed according to their simplified form 简体 in this series. The evolution of these characters can be seen through their different scripts over more than 3,000 years, namely 甲 (骨文) (oracle-bone script, the earliest known Chinese writing), 金 (文) (bronze script), 篆 (体) (seal script), 隶 (书) (official script in the Han dynasty), and modern-day regular script 楷 (书). The oracle-bone and bronze scripts invariably explain the original meanings of the Chinese characters concerned. Occasionally, it is necessary to mention the conventional characters 繁体 for elaboration.
The panels in each unit explain the word origin, the phrases in which the character appears, its use as a component in word formation and, where applicable, its cultural significance.
