马赛 (Mǎ sài) — Marseilles | TongTong Chinese Dictionary

Definition

noun

Marseilles

马赛。
Wǒ míng nián xiǎng qù fǎ guó Mǎ sài lǚ yóu.
I want to travel to Marseilles, France next year.
马赛，。
Mǎ sài Zài fǎ guó nán bù, kào jìn dì zhōng hǎi.
Marseilles is in southern France, near the Mediterranean Sea.
马赛。
Wǒ cóng Mǎ sài zuò huǒ chē qù le bā lí.
I took a train from Marseilles to Paris.

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 马 and 赛 only spell the foreign name Marseilles; they carry no meaning of their own 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 馬; 马 is its simplified writing.

The traditional form 馬 shows a horse with its head facing left, a flowing mane, and two legs standing vertically.

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

This origin belongs to the traditional form 賽; 赛 is its simplified writing.

Meaning part形符xíngfú

貝貝bèishell

Sound part声符shēngfú

塞

Same sound today

The traditional form 賽 uses 貝 (shell) for meaning and 塞 for sound. The simplified 赛 is a later shorthand.

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