táng
sugar
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我喜欢吃糖
wǒ xǐhuān chī táng
I like to eat candy.
糖果很甜
tángguǒ hěn tián
Candy is very sweet.
糖水很热
tángshuǐ hěn rè
The sugar water is very hot.
白糖 (bái táng)
white sugar
红糖 (hóng táng)
brown sugar
苦 (kǔ)
bitter
咸 (xián)
salty
The Chinese character 糖 (táng) for "sugar" is a pictophonetic compound character. The radical part of the character is 艹 (cǎo), which represents grass or plants. This is because sugar was originally extracted from sugarcane, a type of grass. The phonetic part of the character is 旦 (dàn), which is pronounced similarly to the word for "sugar" in Old Chinese. The combination of these two parts creates the character 糖, which represents the sweet substance extracted from plants. Over time, the character 糖 has come to be used to refer to sugar in general, regardless of its source.
