记者
jìzhě · HSK 3
journalist
📰 记 (record) + 者 (person) = person who records = journalist
记 means to record or note down; 者 is a suffix meaning the person who does something (like -er in English). Together: the one who records events — a reporter or journalist.
记 — speech radical 讠 (言) + self 己
记 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The left side 讠 (the 'speech' radical, simplified from 言) signals meaning related to words or recording, while 己 ('self') supplies the sound. Together it conveys writing down or remembering — noting things in words.
者 — old/elder 耂 + say 曰
Originally depicted sugarcane or a similar plant, but the form was reanalyzed as 耂 (old) over 曰 (say). It became a grammatical suffix meaning 'one who…' or 'the…thing,' nominalizing verbs and adjectives. Today 者 mainly marks agents or categories, as in 学者 'scholar' or 记者 'reporter.'