立陶宛 (Lì táo wǎn) — Lithuania | tongtong Chinese Dictionary

Definition

noun

Lithuania

立陶宛。
Wǒ qù nián qù le Lì táo wǎn.
I went to Lithuania last year.
立陶宛。
Lì táo wǎn Shì yí gè ōu zhōu guó jiā.
Lithuania is a European country.
立陶宛？
Nǐ liǎo jiě Lì táo wǎn de wén huà ma?
Do you know about Lithuanian culture?

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 立陶宛 carry no independent meaning here; they spell the foreign name.

Sound-only characters

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

立 pictures a person standing on the ground.

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

The oldest 陶 paired 阜 (mound of dirt) with 勹 (two people) and 土 (earth), showing digging; the parts below 勹 later changed.

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

宀夗宛

Meaning part形符xíngfú

宀宀mián

Sound part声符shēngfú

夗

夗wǎn宛wǎn

Same sound today

宛 has 宀, a roof/house shape, with 夗 giving the sound; its early meaning was perhaps linked to a house.