慕尼黑 (Mù ní hēi) — Munich (city in Germany)

Definition

noun

Munich (city in Germany)

慕尼黑。
Wǒ míng nián xiǎng qù Mù ní hēi lǚ xíng.
I want to travel to Munich next year.
慕尼黑。
Mù ní hēi Shì dé guó nán bù de yí gè dà chéng shì.
Munich is a big city in southern Germany.
慕尼黑？
Nǐ cān guān guò Mù ní hēi de bó wù guǎn ma?
Have you visited the museums in Munich?

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 慕, 尼, and 黑 carry no meaning of their own here; together they spell the German city name Munich.

Sound-only characters

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

莫㣺慕

Meaning part形符xíngfú

㣺Written in full as心xīnheart

Sound part声符shēngfú

莫

Same sound today

慕 combines 莫 for the sound with the lower 㣺, a form of 心 (heart).

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.

The shape of 黑 seems to come from drawing a head marked with dots, usually read as facial tattoos.