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喇叭 (lǎ ba) — car horn; loudspeaker; speaker; brass wind instrument; trumpet; suona

Definition

喇叭 is a phonetic loan for a brass wind instrument (trumpet, suona), but in modern spoken Chinese it usually means a car horn or loudspeaker. 喇叭套着 the original Chinese word 号; 号 is a classifier for numbers/dates, not an instrument.

noun
car hornloudspeakerspeakerbrass wind instrumenttrumpetsuona
Measure word · 个

Examples

  • 喇叭。
    Qián miàn de chē àn le yí xià lǎ ba.
    The car in front honked its horn.
  • 喇叭。
    Tā yòng lǎ ba tōng zhī dà jiā kāi huì.
    He used a loudspeaker to notify everyone about the meeting.
  • 喇叭。
    Tā zài yuè duì lǐ chuī lǎ ba.
    He plays the trumpet in the band.

Origin

Single-morpheme word
构词法gòucífǎ
联绵liánmiánBound pair

Two characters that only ever appear together, spelling one ancient two-syllable word.

喇lā
叭bā

The two syllables together name a horn or loudspeaker; neither character carries its own meaning here.

Sound-only characters

No reliable origin is recorded for this character.

Open 喇 →

No reliable origin is recorded for this character.

Open 叭 →
Appears in
HSK 3.0 Level 7-9HSK 2.0 Level 6Music

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