难 · nán
difficult, arduous, hard; unable
Meanings & readings
Meaning & readings
difficult, arduous, hard; unable
- Mandarin
- nán
- Cantonese
- naan4
Unihan definitions and selected character readings. Read the word to establish its pronunciation in context.
Form & structure
Writing & identity
- Unicode
- U+96BE
- Radical
- 隹 · 172
- Strokes
- 10 · Unihan
- Residual
- 2
Source record · Unihan 17.0. Individual senses and historical claims have not yet been reviewed by zimai.
Stroke order
10 strokesModern stroke order; regional conventions can differ. Stroke medians: Make Me a Hanzi via HanziLookupJS, drawn as an even pen line.
Graphical structure
How to read these symbols
⿰ left–right · ⿱ above–below · ⿻ overlap. Dotted boxes indicate positions, not missing characters. Each symbol describes the components that follow it; nested symbols describe a component in more detail. Source codes identify alternative analyses, not a writing sequence or an etymology.
BabelStone IDS · 2025-06-27. Region tags are preserved; 〾 marks approximation and {n} identifies an unencoded source component. These describe graphical structure, not historical derivation.
Words & connections
Words using 难
Character connections
History & distinctions
Related forms
難
Unihan traditional/simplified variant properties. Conversion may depend on context.
Sources & reference
Evidence & next depth
Retained Unihan properties
- kMandarin
- nán
- kCantonese
- naan4
- kDefinition
- difficult, arduous, hard; unable
- kTotalStrokes
- 10
- kRSUnicode
- 172.2 29.8
- kTraditionalVariant
- U+96BE U+96E3
- kSimplifiedVariant
- U+96BE
- kTGH
- 2013:2147
Readings across dictionaries
- Xiandai Hanyu · 1983
- nán 0817.010 · nàn 0818.040
- Tongyong Guifan · 2013
- nán 262.010 · nàn 262.080
- Reading counts · XDHYPLCD
- nán(795) nan(344) nàn(82)