巴士拉 (Bā shì lā) — Basra (city in Iraq)

Definition

noun

Basra (city in Iraq)

巴士拉。
Bā shì lā Shì yī lā kè nán bù de yí zuò chéng shì.
Basra is a city in southern Iraq.
巴士拉。
Tā chū chāi qù guò yí cì Bā shì lā.
He went to Basra once on a business trip.
巴士拉。
Bā shì lā Yǐ shí yóu hé gǎng kǒu wén míng.
Basra is famous for oil and its port.

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 巴士拉 only spell the foreign name Basra and carry no meaning of their own.

Sound-only characters

No reliable origin is recorded for this character.

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

The shape 士 comes from a simple drawing of a war axe. The character later came to mean a soldier, officer, or intellectual.

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

Sound part声符shēngfú

立

The sound has drifted apartThe sound part was a clue two thousand years ago — it often still helps, but not always.

拉 pairs 手 (hand) with 立, a component that supplies the sound.