HSK 3 · Family

自己 zìjǐ “oneself” in Chinese

Same in Traditional

What 自己 means

  1. oneself
  2. self
  3. (attributive) one’s own

How to say 自己

  • Pitch chart of the fourth tone: falls from high to low, 5 to 1 on the five-level scale自zì4th tone, falling
  • Pitch chart of the third tone: dips low then rises, 2 to 1 to 4 on the five-level scale己jǐ3rd tone, dipping

自己 in a sentence

  1. 我想自己把工作做完。

    Wǒ xiǎng zìjǐ bǎ gōngzuò zuòwán.

    I want to finish the work on my own.

    Sentence #884655 from Tatoeba

  2. 你自己拿蛋糕吃吧。

    Nǐ zìjǐ ná dàngāo chī ba.

    Help yourself to the cake.

    Sentence #332593 from Tatoeba · translation adapted

  3. 一切都会好起来的,要相信自己!

    Yíqiè dōu huì hǎo qǐlai de, yào xiāngxìn zìjǐ!

    Everything will be fine – just believe in yourself!

    Sentence #1259919 from Tatoeba · translation adapted

How 自己 is built

Each colour is one part of the character. Parts repeat across thousands of characters, so learning them makes new words easier. See all 214 in our radicals chart.

The character 自 (zì) drawn as one shape
自zìself; oneself

自 is a single shape of 6 strokes. Learn it whole, then watch its stroke order below.

Memory aidDrawn from a nose. The usual explanation is that people point to their nose to mean “me”, so it came to mean “self”.

The character 己 (jǐ) drawn as one shape
己jǐself

己 is a single shape of 3 strokes. Learn it whole, then watch its stroke order below.

How to write 自己

自 6 strokes · 己 3 strokes

Watch the order, then press Try writing it and draw each stroke in the grid. Each stroke is checked as you go.

自己 (zìjǐ) stroke order chart: each stroke of the characters in the order you write them
Stroke order chart for 自己 (zìjǐ). Red marks the next stroke, so you can copy it onto paper one step at a time.

Words related to 自己

Words with 自

Words with 己

More words: People, Body & Health

FAQs

自己 (zìjǐ) means “oneself” or “self”. It is an HSK 3 word.
Say it zìjǐ: zì with a 4th tone, then jǐ with a 3rd tone. Press Listen at the top of this page to hear it, or Slowly to hear each tone clearly.
Yes. 自己 is written the same way in Simplified and Traditional characters.
Add a Chinese (Simplified) pinyin keyboard to your phone or computer, type ziji with no tone marks or spaces, then choose 自己 from the suggestions. Typing ziji into this dictionary’s search box finds it too.
自己 is an HSK 3 word in the HSK 2.0 word lists.

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Sources: meaning and pinyin checked by a native Mandarin teacher against the official HSK lists. Extra meanings from CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0). Example sentences from Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR). Character parts and stroke order from Make Me a Hanzi.