是

to be; yes

No. 2 most used · 2.7% of everyday spoken Chinese: about 1 character in every 38.

How it's built

• 日sun
• 疋upright

A way to remember it

Under the sun (日), standing upright (疋): what is so, is so.

Words

• 不是

  bú shì

  no; is not; not
• 就是

  jiù shì

  exactly; precisely; only; simply; just; (used correlatively with 也) even; even if
• 只是

  zhǐ shì

  merely; only; just; nothing but; simply; but; however
• 但是

  dàn shì

  but; however
• 还是

  hái shi

  still (as before); had better; unexpectedly
• 真是

  zhēn shi

  indeed; truly; (coll.) (used to express disapproval, annoyance etc)

Sentences

• 上个月是十一月吗？

  shàng gè yuè shì shí yī yuè ma

  Was last month November?
• 下一站是什么地方？

  xià yí zhàn shì shén me dì fāng

  What's the next station?
• 今天也是我的生日。

  jīn tiān yě shì wǒ de shēng rì

  Today is my birthday, too.
• 今天是美好的一天。

  jīn tiān shì měi hǎo de yì tiān

  Today is a beautiful day.

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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.