坦桑尼亚 (Tǎn sāng ní yà) — Tanzania

Definition

noun

Tanzania

坦桑尼亚，。
Wǒ cóng lái méi qù guò Tǎn sāng ní yà, xī wàng yǒu yì tiān néng qù kàn kàn.
I've never been to Tanzania; I hope to go see it one day.
坦桑尼亚，。
Tǎn sāng ní yà Zài fēi zhōu, nà lǐ yǒu hěn duō dòng wù.
Tanzania is in Africa; there are many animals there.
坦桑尼亚，。
Wǒ péng you zài Tǎn sāng ní yà gōng zuò, tā shuō nà lǐ hěn měi.
My friend works in Tanzania; he says it's very beautiful.

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 坦桑尼亚 carry no meaning of their own here; the whole word spells the foreign country name.

Sound-only characters

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

土旦坦

Meaning part形符xíngfú

土土tǔearth

Sound part声符shēngfú

旦

Close in sound todayThe sound part was a clue two thousand years ago — it often still helps, but not always.

坦 is made from 土 (earth) plus 旦, which provides the sound. The earth part shows the sense is about ground.

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

桑 is a picture of a mulberry tree, with its upper part drawn as the tree's foliage.

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

The shape draws one person sitting on or leaning against another person, giving the sense of stopping close to someone.

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

This origin belongs to the traditional form 亞; 亚 is its simplified writing.

The traditional form 亞 likely shows an overhead view of a construction, perhaps a 亞-shaped tomb. Its later simplified form 亚 is just a shorthand.

Appears in