巴塞罗那 (Bā sài luó nà) — Barcelona (city in Spain)

Definition

noun

Barcelona (city in Spain)

巴塞罗那。
Wǒ míng nián xiǎng qù Bā sài luó nà lǚ yóu.
I want to visit Barcelona next year.
巴塞罗那。
Bā sài luó nà De zú qiú duì fēi cháng yǒu míng.
Barcelona's football team is very famous.
巴塞罗那。
Wǒ men zài Bā sài luó nà wán le yí gè xīng qī.
We spent a week in Barcelona.

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 foreign name Barcelona; none carries an independent meaning here.

Sound-only characters

No reliable origin is recorded for this character.

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

塞 combines 宀 (house), 工 (two items), and 廾 (two hands), showing hands stuffing items into a house.

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

This origin belongs to the traditional form 羅; 罗 is its simplified writing.

The traditional form 羅 combines 网 (net) with 維 (a bird tied with string) to show a net for catching birds; the simplified 罗 is a later abbreviation.

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

Meaning part形符xíngfú

邑邑yìcity

Sound part声符shēngfú

冄

冉rǎn那nà

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

The right part 邑 shows a city, and the left part 冄 (written 冉) gives the sound. The character first named a state and was later used to mean 'that'.

Appears in