塞维利亚 (Sāi wéi lì yà) — Seville (city in Spain)

Definition

noun

Seville (city in Spain)

塞维利亚。
Wǒ míng nián xiǎng qù Sāi wéi lì yà lǚ yóu.
I want to travel to Seville next year.
塞维利亚。
Sāi wéi lì yà Shì xī bān yá nán bù de yí zuò gǔ chéng.
Seville is an ancient city in southern Spain.
塞维利亚。
Tā zài Sāi wéi lì yà zhù le sān nián.
He lived in Seville for three years.

Single-morpheme word

构词法gòucífǎ

音译yīnyìTransliteration

The characters spell the sound of a foreign word; their individual meanings play no part.

The characters 塞维利亚 together spell the name Seville, carrying no meaning of their own.

Sound-only characters

Two or more meaningful parts placed together so that their meanings combine into a new one.

塞 combines 宀 (house), 工 (two items), and 廾 (two hands), showing hands stuffing items into a house.

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

This origin belongs to the traditional form 維; 维 is its simplified writing.

Meaning part形符xíngfú

糸糸mìthread

Sound part声符shēngfú

唯

Same sound today

In the traditional form 維, 糸 marks a thread meaning and 唯 provides the sound; the simplified 维 is a later shortened shape.

Two or more meaningful parts placed together so that their meanings combine into a new one.

利 combines 禾 (grain) and 刀 (knife), showing a knife used to cut grain.

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

This origin belongs to the traditional form 亞; 亚 is its simplified writing.

The traditional form 亞 likely shows an overhead view of a construction, perhaps a 亞-shaped tomb. Its later simplified form 亚 is just a shorthand.