咽
yān , yàn , yè , yàn · HSK 7
throat
🗣️ throat radical 口 (mouth) + 因 yīn for sound; 因 hints the yān reading — the mouth-passage you swallow through
口 on the left flags a mouth/opening; 因 on the right both gives the yān sound and means cause/reason. The character spans throat, narrow pass, and to swallow because all pass through that one narrow mouth-channel. Same glyph, shifting tones: yān throat, yàn swallow, yè choke.
咽 — mouth 口 + cause 因 (phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound: 口 (mouth) gives the meaning, while 因 supplies the sound. It originally referred to the throat or pharynx, the passage in the mouth. The senses 'to swallow' (yàn) and 'choked with emotion' (yè) developed from this anatomical core meaning.