马耳他 (Mǎ ěr tā) — Malta | tongtong Chinese Dictionary

Definition

noun

Malta

马耳他。
Wǒ shǔ jià xiǎng qù Mǎ ěr tā lǚ yóu.
I want to travel to Malta during summer vacation.
马耳他。
Mǎ ěr tā Shì ōu zhōu de yí gè dǎo guó.
Malta is an island country in Europe.
马耳他，。
Tā zài Mǎ ěr tā zhù le sān nián, fēi cháng xǐ huan nà lǐ de tiān qì.
He lived in Malta for three years and really liked the weather there.

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 only spell the place name Malta; none carries its own meaning in this word.

Sound-only characters

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

This origin belongs to the traditional form 馬; 马 is its simplified writing.

The traditional form 馬 shows a horse with its head facing left, a flowing mane, and two legs standing vertically.

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

耳 is drawn as a picture of an ear.

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

亻也他

Meaning part形符xíngfú

亻Written in full as人rénman

Sound part声符shēngfú

也

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

他 combines 亻 (a person) with 也, which was chosen for its sound.