钱 qián money
Made up of [钅 jīn metal radical 167, 戋 jiān narrow; small ]A measure word to use for this noun: 元 yuán
Alternative traditional form of character: 錢
Made with 10 strokes.
Can be thought of as a picture of two spears breaking up metal (gold) to make coins, however 'jian' (thin) is probably a rough phonetic
Related characters
Also uses 钅 jīn component: 锅 guō (pot) 铺 pù (store) 铁 tiě (arms) 锡 xī (to bestow) 银 yín (silver) 钟 zhōng (clock) 钻 zuān (to drill)
Also uses 戋 jiān component: 浅 qiǎn (shallow)
Sounds same
乾 qián (Heaven) 乾 qián 前 qián (front)Different tone
千 qiān (thousand) 谦 qiān 浅 qiǎn (shallow) 欠 qiàn (yawn)Pronunciation
Sound file kindly provided by shtooka.net ➚ under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License
Proverbs
一分钱,一分货 yī fēn qián, yī fēn huò You cant buy something for nothing有钱能使鬼推磨 yǒu qián néng shǐ guǐ tuī mò Money can buy you anything