在

at, in; to be somewhere

No. 4 most used · 1.3% of everyday spoken Chinese: about 1 character in every 77.

How it's built

• 才talentGives the sound: cái
• 土earth

A way to remember it

Talent (才) set on the ground (土): it's there, in its place.

Words

• 现在

  xiàn zài

  now; at present; currently
• 正在

  zhèng zài

  to be in the process of (doing sth); to be currently ...-ing
• 存在

  cún zài

  to exist; to be; existence
• 不在乎

  bú zài hu

  not to care
• 实在

  shí zài

  really; actually; indeed
• 在家

  zài jiā

  to be at home; (at a workplace) to be in (as opposed to being away on official business 出差); (Buddhism etc) to remain a layman (as opposed to becoming a monk or a nun 出家)

Sentences

• 不知作者在说什么。

  bù zhī zuò zhě zài shuō shén me

  It is not clear what the writer is trying to say.
• 为什么我还在这里？

  wèi shén me wǒ hái zài zhè lǐ

  Why am I still here?
• 他在一所中学工作。

  tā zài yì suǒ zhōng xué gōng zuò

  He works in a secondary school.
• 他在日本也很有名。

  tā zài rì běn yě hěn yǒu míng

  He is also very famous in Japan.

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How often characters are written: wordfreq by Robyn Speer, CC BY-SA 4.0, with data from Google Books Ngrams and SUBTLEX by Marc Brysbaert and others. Meanings: CC-CEDICT, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sentences: Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR. How often they're said: FrequencyWords and OPUS, from OpenSubtitles.