son
HSK level
儿子 is written with 5 strokes (儿: 2, 子: 3). The animation replays automatically.
儿子 (érzi) is the everyday word for 'son' — the male child of one's parents.
It's used by everyone, in every register: parents talking about their kid, neighbors asking about your family, in writing, on TV. Two things to know: first, the second syllable 子 is unstressed and pronounced with a neutral tone (zi, not zǐ), like most kinship suffixes in modern Mandarin (儿子, 妻子, 房子). Second, Chinese kinship terms are gender-specific — there's no neutral 'child' that defaults to son the way some English-speaking grandparents might say 'my boy.'
If you mean 'child' regardless of gender, the word is 孩子 (háizi). Use 儿子 only when you specifically mean a son. The pair word for daughter is 女儿 (nǚ'ér).
Character by character
Memory hook: 儿 alone means 'child' and 子 also means 'child' — put two 'child' characters together and you specifically get 'son.'
儿子 appears in 1 Fluentide podcast episode at natural native speed — each with the full Chinese script, pinyin, and line-by-line English translation.
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Wǒ yǒu yí ge érzi.
I have one son.
neutral
他的儿子今年八岁。
Tā de érzi jīnnián bā suì.
His son is eight this year.
neutral
我儿子在学中文。
Wǒ érzi zài xué Zhōngwén.
My son is learning Chinese.
spoken
你儿子叫什么名字？
Nǐ érzi jiào shénme míngzi?
What's your son's name?
spoken
孩子 means 'child' in general (any gender). Use 孩子 when gender isn't specified or doesn't matter; use 儿子 when you specifically mean a son.
Just 儿 on its own can mean 'son' in literary or older writing (e.g. 父子, 'father and son'), but in modern speech you almost always say the two-syllable 儿子.
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