Radical 几

2 strokes

幾

As well as meaning “several”, this character also means “how many?” (when you are asking about small numbers, say up to ten).

几 can also be pronounced jī, and it then has a different meaning. This extra pronunciation and meaning is included in HSK Level B, but not in Level a. Whenever a character has another meaning and pronunciation like this, we will let you know the other pronunciation so that you can look it up in a dictionary if you are interested. These extra pronunciations will be printed in gray and will be in brackets.

You will also notice that this character has a traditional form (in a box below the stroke-count) — you can ignore these traditional forms for the time being if you like; we will talk about them in Chapter 27.

When drawing this character, notice that it only has two strokes.

/ There are several wheels to deliver so Teddy offers to load them onto his jeep. (See him careering off down the road scattering wheels in all directions every time he hits a bump!)