议会
yìhuì · HSK 7
general assembly
🏛️ 议 discuss + 会 meeting = the deliberating-assembly: parliament
议 means to discuss or debate; 会 means a meeting or gathering. Together they name the body that debates in session — a legislative assembly like the Knesset, Cortes, or Sanhedrin.
议 — speech radical 讠 (言) + 义 (yì, righteousness)
议 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The speech radical 讠 (言) signals meaning related to talking, while 义 supplies the sound 'yì'. Together they convey discussing or deliberating—literally 'speech about what is right,' which fits its modern senses of 'discuss' and 'proposal.'
会 — 人 person on top + 云 cloud/say below (simplified from 會)
The traditional form 會 showed a lid over a vessel with contents stacked inside, depicting things coming together — hence 'meet, gather, assemble.' From 'gathering' it extended to 'meeting,' then 'understand' (minds meeting) and 'be able to.' The simplified 会 keeps only a schematic top and bottom.