伊豆 (yī dòu) — Izu (place name in Japan)

Definition

noun

Izu (place name in Japan)

伊豆。
Qù nián xià tiān wǒ qù le yī dòu lǚ xíng.
Last summer I went to Izu for a trip.
伊豆。
yī dòu De wēn quán fēi cháng yǒu míng.
Izu's hot springs are very famous.
伊豆。
Tā gěi wǒ dài le yì hé yī dòu de lǜ chá.
He brought me a box of Izu green tea.

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.

伊豆 spells a Japanese place name; the characters carry no meaning here.

Sound-only characters

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

亻尹伊

Meaning part形符xíngfú

亻Written in full as人rénperson

Sound part声符shēngfú

尹

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

The left part 亻 shows a person. The right part 尹 is used for the sound.

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

豆 originally drew some kind of container. It was borrowed for its sound to write the plant name, so the picture and the meaning are unrelated.