不在乎
bù zài hu · HSK 4
not to care
🤷 不 (not) + 在乎 (mind/care about) = doesn't mind
不 negates; 在乎 literally 'be at/in heart' means to take to heart or care about. Together: not taking something to heart, i.e. not caring. Often used like English 'whatever' or 'doesn't matter to me'.
不 — single pictograph; bird flying upward
Originally a pictograph in oracle bone script, traditionally interpreted as a bird flying up toward the sky and unable to come down, suggesting negation or refusal. Over time it became the standard negation word in Chinese, used before verbs and adjectives to mean 'not'.
在 — earth 土 + phonetic 才
Originally a phono-semantic compound: 土 (earth) gives the meaning of a place or location, while 才 supplies the sound. It came to mean 'to be present/located at,' and now also serves as a grammatical marker for ongoing actions, like 'in the middle of doing.'