默读
mò dú · HSK 7
to read in silence
📖🤫 默读 = 默 silent + 读 read
默 carries the 黑 (black/dark) component and means silent or tacit; 读 means to read. Together: reading without speaking aloud.
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).