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Mythic Mandarin

读书 (dú shū): meaning and stroke order

读书 (dú shū) means to read a book, to study, to attend school.

读书

Simplified
读书
Traditional
讀書
Pinyin
dú shū

Stroke order of 读书

读

  • dòu comma; phrase marked by pause
  • dú to read out; to read aloud; to read
  • 10 strokes
  • Traditional form: 讀

Stroke by stroke

书

  • Shū abbr. for 書經|书经[Shu1 jing1]
  • shū book; letter
  • 4 strokes
  • Traditional form: 書

Stroke by stroke

Meaning of 读书

  1. dú shū Traditional 讀書
    • to read a book
    • to study
    • to attend school

Radicals of the characters

读
Radical 讠 (Kangxi radical 149) in its simplified form · 10 strokes · 讠 on the left, 卖 on the right
书
Radical 乙 (Kangxi radical 5) · 4 strokes

Radicals and stroke counts: Unicode Unihan database. Structure: the shapes a character is written with (BabelStone IDS), not necessarily parts that carry meaning or sound.

读书 in our stories

Preview version — Chinese review in progress.

  • 曾琳在德国汉堡读书，今年端午节，学校的中国学生会想办一次龙舟比赛。

    Zēng Lín zài Déguó Hànbǎo dúshū jīnnián Duānwǔjié xuéxiào de Zhōngguó xuéshenghuì xiǎng bàn yí cì lóngzhōu bǐsài

    Zeng Lin was studying in Hamburg, Germany. This year, for the Dragon Boat Festival, the Chinese students' association wanted to hold a dragon boat race.

    From the story Dragon boats in Hamburg HSK 5

  • 其实，读书本身并没有错。赵括的问题不在于读得太多，而在于他从来没有想过：书上的敌人不会动，真的敌人会。

    qíshí dúshū běnshēn bìng méiyǒu cuò Zhào Kuò de wèntí bú zàiyú dú de tài duō ér zàiyú tā cónglái méiyǒu xiǎng guò shū shàng de dírén bú huì dòng zhēn de dírén huì

    Reading in itself is not wrong. Zhao Kuo's problem was not that he read too much, but that he never realised that the enemy in a book doesn't move, while a real one does.

    From the story Fighting battles on paper HSK 7–9 · Level 8

  • 一千多年前，有一位叫祝英台的姑娘，聪明好学，一心想去书院读书。

    yìqiān duō nián qián yǒu yí wèi jiào Zhù Yīngtái de gūniang cōngming hàoxué yìxīn xiǎng qù shūyuàn dúshū

    More than a thousand years ago there was a girl called Zhu Yingtai, clever and studious, who longed to go and study at an academy.

    From the story The Butterfly Lovers HSK 7–9 · Level 8

Stories using 读书

Dictionary data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0). Stroke data: Hanzi Writer data, derived from Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License). Animation: Hanzi Writer (MIT licence). Radicals and stroke counts: Unicode Unihan (Unicode License v3).