阅读
yuèdú · HSK 4
read
📖 阅 (inspect) + 读 (read) = read carefully, peruse
阅 means to inspect or review (the 门 gate radical hints at scrutinising what passes through), and 读 means to read aloud or study. Together 阅读 is the deliberate, careful kind of reading — perusing a text, not skimming it.
读 — speech radical 讠 + 卖 (mài, sell)
读 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The left side 讠 (speech) gives the meaning, since reading is tied to speaking words aloud. The right side 卖 originally provided the sound; in the traditional form 讀 the phonetic was 賣 (yù/dú).