波哥大 (bō gē dà) — Bogotá, capital of Colombia

Definition

noun

Bogotácapital of Colombia

波哥大。
Wǒ míng nián xiǎng qù bō gē dà lǚ yóu.
I want to travel to Bogotá next year.
波哥大。
bō gē dà Shì gē lún bǐ yà zuì dà de chéng shì.
Bogotá is the largest city in Colombia.
波哥大。
Tā zài bō gē dà zhù le wǔ nián.
He lived in Bogotá for five years.

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 together spell the foreign name; none carries its own 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.

氵皮波

Meaning part形符xíngfú

氵Written in full as水shuǐwater

Sound part声符shēngfú

皮

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

The left side 氵 is water, and the right side 皮 gives the sound.

No reliable origin is recorded for this character.

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.

Appears in