瓦加杜古 (wǎ jiā dù gǔ) — Ouagadougou (capital of Burkina Faso)

Definition

noun

Ouagadougou (capital of Burkina Faso)

Examples

瓦加杜古？
Nǐ tīng shuō guò wǎ jiā dù gǔ ma?
Have you heard of Ouagadougou?
瓦加杜古。
wǎ jiā dù gǔ Shì xī fēi de yí gè dà chéng shì.
Ouagadougou is a large city in West Africa.
瓦加杜古。
Wǒ jiāng lái xiǎng qù wǎ jiā dù gǔ lǚ yóu.
I want to travel to Ouagadougou in the future.

Origin

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 in 瓦加杜古 only spell the foreign name Ouagadougou; none carries its own meaning here.

Sound-only characters

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

瓦’s shape is a picture of fired earthenware pottery or a tile.

Open 瓦 →

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

力口加

力力lìstrength
口口kǒumouth

加 pairs 力 and 口. In one explanation 力 is strength and 口 is the mouth, meaning exaggeration; in another 力 is plowing effort and 口 is breath or exclamation, meaning extra effort.

Open 加 →

No reliable origin is recorded for this character.

Open 杜 →

An abstract idea shown by a mark or a diagram rather than by a picture of an object.

One reading of 古 sees a shield-like shape above an open mark, showing strength and firmness. Another sees a person spitting out bad-tasting food.

Open 古 →

Appears in

City & Urban

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