Meaning & readings
value, price
On’yomi カ、ケ
Kun’yomi あたい
Origin
The character 価 combines a person radical on the left, which suggests this word relates to human activity or social matters, with a sound component on the right that helps indicate how to pronounce it. The person element fits well with "value" or "price," since these are concepts that people determine and exchange in society. Over time, the character's shape became standardized to represent the abstract idea of worth or monetary value, even though the original pictographic elements are no longer visually obvious.
Components
- 亻
- 覀
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 9
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #250 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+04FA1