Ancestor in Chinese
ancestor · HSK 6
祖先
- 祖 grandfather
- 先 first
Counted with 个: 一个祖先
我们的祖先很早就开始种水稻了。 Our ancestors started growing rice a long time ago.
More words with 祖 or 先
How do you say ancestor in Chinese?
Ancestor in Chinese is 祖先 (zǔ xiān).
Which word should I use?
Start with the first one: it is the easiest on the HSK list. The others say it too, often in a more formal way or for a narrower sense; each one’s page has real sentences that show how it is used.
Where do these words come from?
Our own dictionary’s meanings for the official HSK word list. A word is shown for an English word when that is one of its first meanings; the easiest word whose first meaning it is comes first.
More free tools
Greetings: hello, good morning and goodbye. Measure words: the classifier for any noun. Tone practice: say a word and see your tones. Read any Mandarin: point at a word for its meaning.
Meanings from our own dictionary. Chinese often has more than one way to say a word.