贝尔格莱德 (Bèi ěr gé lái dé) — Belgrade (capital of Serbia)

Definition

noun

Belgrade (capital of Serbia)

Examples

贝尔格莱德。
Wǒ míng nián xiǎng qù Bèi ěr gé lái dé lǚ yóu.
I want to travel to Belgrade next year.
贝尔格莱德。
Bèi ěr gé lái dé Shì sài ěr wéi yà de shǒu dū.
Belgrade is the capital of Serbia.
贝尔格莱德。
Tā zài Bèi ěr gé lái dé zhù le sān nián.
He lived in Belgrade for three years.

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 贝尔格莱德 only spell Belgrade and do not carry separate meanings here.

Sound-only characters

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

This origin belongs to the traditional form 貝; 贝 is its simplified writing.

The traditional form 貝, not the simplified 贝, shows a cowrie shell used as money in ancient China.

Open 贝 →

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

假借jiǎjièLater borrowed for its sound alone — the picture has nothing to do with today’s meaning.

This origin belongs to the traditional form 爾; 尔 is its simplified writing.

The traditional form 爾, simplified as 尔, originally drew cloth on a loom with crossing threads. It was borrowed for its sound to write “you,” so the picture is unrelated to that meaning.

Open 尔 →

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

木各格

Meaning part形符xíngfú

木木mùwood

Sound part声符shēngfú

各

各gè格gé

Same sound today

格 is built from 木 (wood) on the left and 各 on the right, which gives the sound.

Open 格 →

No reliable origin is recorded for this character.