Meaning & readings
home, house, residence, our house, my husband
On’yomi タク
Nanori け、たか、たけ、や、やけ
Origin
The character 宅 combines a roof symbol at the top, which represents a building or dwelling place, with a component below that sounds like "tak" to indicate the pronunciation. The roof radical is a common classifier used in many characters related to houses and indoor spaces, so pairing it with a sound hint creates a character that means home or residence. This phono-semantic approach—using one part for meaning and another for sound—was an efficient way to expand the written language without creating entirely new shapes.
Components
- 宀
- 乇
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 6
- Kangxi radical
- 40
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #357 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05B85