BaoBao Talk
静
jìng · still, quiet, motionless, gentle
- Pinyin
- jìng
- Tone
- fourth tone, falling
- Strokes
- 14
- HSK level
- HSK 2
- Radical
- 青
- Traditional
- 靜
What 静 means
- still, quiet, motionless, gentle
How to remember 静
Its sound decides the scene before you invent anything: the start picks who is in it, the ending picks where, and the tone picks where in that place you are standing.
Actor
the Jeweller
the j- sound
Place
the Laundrette
the drum goes ung-ung-ung
Tone
the slope down to the cellar
one sharp drop
Put the Jeweller at the Laundrette, the slope down to the cellar, doing something with 青 and 争 that means “still, quiet, motionless, gentle”. That one picture carries the sound, the tone and the meaning at once. How the method works →
Why the Jeweller? the Jeweller is a woman because the -i- medial follows the initial, and the name starts with J to echo the j- it stands for. All 55 actors →
Stroke order
The diagram above shades the strokes from first to last: the palest stroke is written first, the darkest last. 静 takes 14 strokes.
What 静 is built from
Characters are made of a small number of repeating parts. Learn the parts once and every character that uses them gets easier.
Remember 静, don't just look it up
BaoBao Talk turns each character into a scene built from its own sound and tone, so it has something to hang on. The parts repeat, which is why the hundredth character costs less effort than the tenth.