Pinyin Syllable

Chinese characters pronounced zhua

Learn common Chinese characters pronounced zhua, including 抓 zhuā, 爪 zhǎo / zhuǎ. Compare tones, meanings, traditional forms, words, and example sentences.

How to Pronounce This Syllable

For zhua, curl the tongue back on zh and join it smoothly to ua; keep it as a single syllable and hold the tone steady.

Initial zh

Put the tongue slightly curled back. Do not pronounce it like English “j”.

Final ua

Settle the final ua into a steady mouth shape first, then lay the tone on top.

Study Tip

Start with the most common characters (抓 zhuā, 爪 zhǎo / zhuǎ) and lock in their tones. 2 common characters share the sound zhua, so lean on words to tell the rest apart.

Learn by Tone

zhua turns up here with 2 different tones; a change of tone usually means a different character, so the groups below are split by tone.

1st tone

Taking the 1st tone here: 抓 (1 in total). Lock this tone in your ear before the meaning.

抓zhuāto grab; to catch; to arrest; to snatch

3rd tone

Taking the 3rd tone here: 爪 (1 in total). Lock this tone in your ear before the meaning.

爪zhǎo / zhuǎclaw

Common Words With This Sound

Seeing zhua inside whole words makes it clear which character is meant — here are common ones.

抓住zhuā zhùto grab hold of; to capture 抓紧zhuā jǐnto keep a firm grip on; to pay close attention to; to lose no time in (doing sth)抓地zhuā dìgrip on the road; roadholding 爪子zhuǎ zi(animal's) claw 去爪qù zhuǎto declaw (a cat etc); (food preparation) to remove claws, pincer legs or similar hard tips 爪机zhuǎ jī(Internet slang) mobile phone

Characters

2 common characters in this group.

Character#1 抓 zhuāto grab; to catch; to arrest; to snatchTraditional: 抓 Character#2 爪 zhǎo / zhuǎclawTraditional: 爪