自 (zi6 | zi4) : self; private; personal

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自

zi6

zi4

[1] self; private; personal [2] from [3] natural; naturally; a Chinese family name

Stroke count: 6

Level: 1

Radical: 自 (#132)

This character is used in both Cantonese and Mandarin/Standard written Chinese.

自

Don't confuse with:
白目

This word has been viewed 29607 times since 30th Oct 2012, was added by sheik on 18th Mar 2007 21:22 and last edited on 22nd Jul 2009 02:17

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冷暖自知 laang5 nyun5 zi6 zi1 leng3 nuan3 zi4 zhi1 = self- awareness; lit. the person who drinks it knows best if its hot or cold (Zen proverb)

自信踭 zi6 seon3 zaang1 = padded insoles for height, shoe lift inserts

個自 go3 zi6 = each

自在 zi6 zoi6 zi4 zai5 = at ease; free, unrestrained, comfortable

自己 zi6 gei2/gei2*1 zi4 ji3 = oneself; self

自行車 zi6 hang4 ce1 zi4 xing2 che1 = bicycle 國

來自 loi4 zi6 lai2 zi4 = to come from 國

自然 zi6 jin4 zi4 ran2 = nature; natural

自殺 zi6 saat3 zi4 sha1 = to commit suicide

私自 si1 zi6 si1 zi4 = secretly; privately
See all 365 compounds (CantoDict reports 396 compounds in total, but some may be Common Formations)

Showing 10 of 26 examples containing 自

我來自美國。國
I'm from the United States.

你越做越自然。
The more you do it, the more natural it will become.

肉是一種食物, 它取自動物。國
Meat is a type of food, it comes from animals.

阿媽今晚唔煮飯，要食自己。粵
Mum is not going to cook tongiht, so we/I have to have dinner on our/my own.
[Usually mother cooks at home every night. If she does not cook, it implies that she is out at night, so the entire family has to think about the dinner stuff.]

牛奶出自乳牛身上
Cow's milk comes from the body of dairy cows
[Instead of saying "cow produces milk", it sounds more natural to say it the other way: "milk comes from cow"]

小明成日讚佢自己
Siu Ming is always praising herself.

我對呢一點好有自信粵
I have a lot of self-confidence about it.
[Lit. I toward this one point very self-confident.]

個個學生都擔心自己嘅成績。粵
Every student is worried about his grades.
[Reduplicated classifiers (like 個個 here) can be used as a subject, but not as an object. We cannot say, for instance, 通知個個 for "to tell everyone". ]

我就喝自來水。國
I only drink water

呢棟大廈有自來水粵
This building has "self-arrived" ("running") water.

Show all 26 examples

Legend
國 : This term is used in Mandarin/Standard written Chinese, not Cantonese.
粵 : This term is used in Cantonese, not Mandarin/Standard written Chinese.
No icon: This term is used in both Cantonese and Mandarin/Standard written Chinese.

Forum Code to link to this word:
[big][url=http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/characters/599/]自[/url][/big]
HTML Code to link to this word:
<a href="http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/characters/599/" class="chinesemed" target="_blank">自</a>
Decimal representation of this word: 自
Unicode code for this character: U+81EA (off-site link)

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a detailed description of all the meanings
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our arbitrarily assigned difficulty level
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a list of characters which look similar and are therefore possible sources of confusion (where relevant)
a list of compound words that use this character, ordered by difficulty level.
(we would really appreciate new volunteers to add some more compound words to the database so please post to the CantoDict forum if you would like to spend an occasional 10 mins or so helping)


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