The Home — 宀/门/户/广

A radical tour of the shelter namespace

Chinese is built on a clear split between what protects you and what you do inside. Four radicals cover the protecting part: a roof (宀), a gate (门), a door-leaf (户), and a lean-to (广). Learn these four and the vocabulary of houses, rooms, shops, and civic buildings stops being arbitrary — it becomes composition.

// The shelter namespace.
import { home, room, guest, safe }    from "宀";   // roofed interior
import { gate, ask, room, open }     from "门";   // gate / entry
import { house, place, resident }    from "户";   // single door-leaf
import { shop, courtyard, bed }      from "广";   // leaning shelter

1. The radical map

Anchors jump to each section below.

6. Rooms of the house

Every room name compounds from radicals you now know, plus one context word.

7. Furniture and fixtures

8. Sentence patterns

Sentences that fall out of this vocabulary. Word order is SVO; location phrases go after the verb or before it with 在.

// 我 的 家 很 大。
// wǒ de jiā hěn dà
// "My home is big."
my.home.size === "big";

// 客厅 里 有 两 把 椅子。
// kètīng lǐ yǒu liǎng bǎ yǐzi
// "There are two chairs in the living room." (把 = classifier for things with handles)
livingRoom.contents.push(chair, chair);

// 我 在 厨房 做 饭。
// wǒ zài chúfáng zuò fàn
// "I'm cooking in the kitchen." (在 = location marker, before the verb)
me.location = kitchen; me.cook(meal);

// 请 关 门。
// qǐng guān mén
// "Please close the door." (请 = polite prefix)
door.close();

// 这 是 我 家。
// zhè shì wǒ jiā
// "This is my home." (shortened from 我的家 — 家 lets you drop 的)
this === my.home;

9. Next steps

• Browse home & living vocabulary — filtered by tag
• Start a review session — the 宀 set compounds faster than anything
• Previous: The Body — the flesh-radical tour
• Module 4: Composition — the full theory of radicals

Next in the series: travel and time. Both are small radical sets with enormous daily payoff — once you have 车 and 辶, every vehicle and verb of motion parses for free.