但

but; only

No. 100 most used · 0.30% of everyday spoken Chinese: about 1 character in every 332.

How it's built

• 亻person
• 旦dawnGives the sound: dàn

A way to remember it

A person (亻) at dawn (旦): but a new day is here.

Words

• 但是

  dàn shì

  but; however
• 但愿

  dàn yuàn

  if only (sth were possible); I wish (that)

Sentences

• 我想，但我不能。

  wǒ xiǎng dàn wǒ bù néng

  I want to, but I can't.
• 但是，我不要。

  dàn shì wǒ bú yào

  But I don't want to.
• 我很爱她但是她不爱我。

  wǒ hěn ài tā dàn shì tā bú ài wǒ

  I love her so much, but she does not love me.
• 他想回家，但是他不可以。

  tā xiǎng huí jiā dàn shì tā bù kě yǐ

  He wants to go home, but he can't.

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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.