How to Say "Osaka" in Mandarin

大阪

Dàbǎn

大阪 (Dàbǎn) is the Mandarin Chinese name for the city of Osaka in Japan.

The term is used as a proper noun to refer to the specific city located in Honshū, Japan.

Meaning: city in Honshū, Japan (name)

What does it mean word for word?

The character 阪 refers to a slope or hill.

Dàbǎn

In Mandarin, the name 大阪 is a direct orthographic borrowing from Japanese, meaning it preserves the original characters regardless of how the pronunciation differs between the two languages.
The modern way of writing the name, 大阪, only became the standard version in Mandarin around the late 1870s. Before this, the version 大坂 was much more dominant.
In historical records, the city was sometimes written as 小坂 or 尾坂. These versions used characters meaning 'small' or 'tail' to describe the same local landscape.

我住在大阪。
I live in Osaka.
This sentence is useful for stating your place of residence with 大阪.
Tatoeba #8701028 by crescat, translation #2042110 by kerbear407
他出生在大阪。
He was born in Osaka.
This sentence is useful for stating a place of birth with 大阪.
Tatoeba #9959025 by GlossaMatik, translation #301284 by CN
你在大阪住了多久？
How long have you been staying in Osaka?
This sentence is useful for asking about the duration of someone's stay in 大阪.
Tatoeba #924629 by jessie0422, translation #275682 by Zifre
我计划明年去大阪旅游.
I plan on traveling to Osaka next year.
29 more sentences on Tatoeba

Sources

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