塔 (tǎ): pagoda; tower

Measure Word

一座塔 zuò

Meanings

1 pagoda; tower
2 tower-shaped structure

Characters

塔

ta

pagoda; tower

Examples

那座塔有一千多年的历史了。

Nà zuò tǎ yǒu yīqiān duōnián de lìshǐ le.

That pagoda has over a thousand years of history.

埃菲尔铁塔在巴黎。

Āifēi'ěrtiětǎ zài Bālí.

The Eiffel Tower is in Paris.

灯塔为船只指引方向。

Dēngtǎ wèi chuánzhī zhǐyǐn fāngxiàng.

The lighthouse guides ships.

他们爬上了古塔的顶层。

Tāmen pá shàng le gǔ tǎ de dǐngcéng.

They climbed to the top of the ancient pagoda.

Tips

culture

Chinese pagodas (佛塔 fótǎ) originated from Indian Buddhist stupas. Famous ones include the Big Wild Goose Pagoda (大雁塔) in Xi'an and Leifeng Pagoda (雷峰塔) in Hangzhou.

Components

radical

土 tǔ

earth; soil

Left earth radical, the indexing component. Marks 塔 as an earthen/built structure: pagodas were originally earth-and-brick mounds enshrining Buddhist relics. Same radical anchors 城 (city wall), 墙 (wall), 堂 (hall), 坛 (altar).

phonetic

荅 dá

answer; small bean

Right-side 荅 supplies the sound: dá shifts to tǎ with an aspiration/tone shift. 塔 is a transliteration of Sanskrit 'stūpa' — a Buddhist relic mound — so the phonetic was chosen to match 'tā/tǎ' for the foreign word, and 土 added to mark it as a structure of earth. 荅 here is a sound carrier.