大阪 (Dà bǎn) — Osaka (city in Japan) | TongTong Chinese Dictionary

Definition

noun

Osaka (city in Japan)

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.

大阪 represents the Japanese name Osaka; 大 and 阪 carry no independent meaning here.

Sound-only characters

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

The form 大 is a picture of a person standing and facing forward, not of someone stretching their arms.

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

阝反阪

Meaning part形符xíngfú

阝Written in full as阜fùmound

Sound part声符shēngfú

反

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

The left part 阝 represents a mound, and 反 supplies the sound; together they form 阪, meaning hill or slope.

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