Radical 青

8 strokes

plant (133a) + moon 月 (61) = blue-green 青

The character means either “blue” or “green” (though there are also separate characters for each of these two colors) so we have called it both!

This character gives rise to a good phonetic series, coming right up. In fact we have two phonetic series, one pronounced “qing” and the other “jing”. We have already seen something like this with Characters 133 to 136.

This situation arose because the pronunciations have gradually changed down the centuries (although you can see that the two sounds are still very similar), while the characters stayed the same.

青年 (168) qīngnián a youth

[年青 (168) niánqīng young]

(On a cliff face) The plant in the moon- light looks blue, but it’s actually green. / Only the giant is tall enough to see into the chink of rock where the plant is growing.