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三千万 (sān qiān mò) — thirty million

Definition

numeral
thirty million

Examples

  • 三千万。
    Zhè cì xiàng mù tóu zī le sān qiān mò yuán.
    This project invested thirty million yuan.
  • 三千万。
    Zhè ge chéng shì de rén kǒu chāo guò sān qiān mò.
    This city's population exceeds thirty million.
  • 三千万。
    Tā men qù nián zhuàn le sān qiān mò lì rùn.
    They made a profit of thirty million last year.

Origin

Compound word
构词法gòucífǎ
偏正piānzhèngModifier + head

The first part narrows down the second: it says what kind of thing the head is.

三sānthree
千万ten million
千qiānthousand万wànten thousand
偏正Modifier + head

三 gives three, 千 gives thousand, and 万 gives ten thousand, so the number builds thirty million.

Characters in this word

An abstract idea shown by a mark or a diagram rather than by a picture of an object.

三 is drawn as three parallel strokes, like 一 with one stroke and 二 with two.

Open 三 →

Most characters — around four in five — are built this way: one part hints at the meaning, the other at the pronunciation.

Meaning part形符xíngfú
一一yīone, signifying a number
Sound part声符shēngfú
人
人rén千qiān
The sound has drifted apartThe sound part was a clue two thousand years ago — it often still helps, but not always.

千 pairs 人, whose sound was similar, with 一, a number stroke; the extra line was explained as extension, and a thousand is a number reached by extending counting.

Open 千 →

A drawing of the thing itself, worn down over three thousand years into a few strokes.

This origin belongs to the traditional form 萬; 万 is its simplified writing.

For 万, the form 萬 was originally a picture of a scorpion, later borrowed for its sound to write 'ten thousand'; the scorpion picture is unrelated to that number.

Open 万 →
Appears in
Numbers & Counting

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