About
This character is a relatively recent innovation, forming a phonetic and semantic fusion. It combines the human radical 亻 on the left, indicating a connection to people, with the numeral three 三 on the right, which provides the numerical meaning and core pronunciation. As a colloquial contraction, it merges "three" and a general measure word for people or items into one syllable, used chiefly in the spoken dialects of Northern China. Since it already contains the quantity and an implicit measure word, grammar forbids adding another measure word directly afterward, making it a unique shorthand confined mainly to informal communication.