白俄罗斯 (Bái é luó sī) — Belarus | tongtong Chinese Dictionary

Definition

noun

Belarus

白俄罗斯。
Bái é luó sī Shì ōu zhōu dōng bù de yí gè guó jiā.
Belarus is a country in Eastern Europe.
白俄罗斯。
Míng sī kè shì Bái é luó sī de shǒu dū.
Minsk is the capital of Belarus.
白俄罗斯。
Wǒ dǎ suàn míng nián qù Bái é luó sī lǚ xíng.
I plan to travel to Belarus next year.

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 in 白俄罗斯 carry no meaning of their own here; the word spells Belarus.

Sound-only characters

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

白 is thought to picture either an acorn or a human head.

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

亻我俄

Meaning part形符xíngfú

亻Written in full as人rénperson

Sound part声符shēngfú

我

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

俄 pairs 亻 (person) with 我, which gives the sound.

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

This origin belongs to the traditional form 羅; 罗 is its simplified writing.

The traditional form 羅 combines 网 (net) with 維 (a bird tied with string) to show a net for catching birds; the simplified 罗 is a later abbreviation.

No reliable origin is recorded for this character.