Articles About the Chinese Language

How to say "air-to-ground missile" in Mandarin Chinese

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Let’s start with the word 导, pronounced dao3, which means “lead; guide; channel; transmit; conduct; instruct, direct (as in a performance)”.

You may know this word from the word for “tour guide”, which is 导游 [= dao3 you2]. This is just “guide” + the word 游, which means “travel”. (Note that 游 can also mean “part of a river” or “to associate with”, which doesn’t make sense, but hey, why not.)

Ok, so now let’s add the word 弹, pronounced dan4, which means “ball; pellet; bullet; shell; bomb”. The combination is 导弹, dao3dan4, which means “guided missle”. (Now we’re making progress.)

The next few words you need are pretty easy ones:

• 空 = kong1 = “empty; hollow; void; unoccupied; air; sky; in vain; for nothing; to no avail”
  
•  地 = di4 = “the earth; land; soil; fields; surface; ground; floor; place; locality; position; situation; room; background; distance” Finally, you need the word
  
• 对 = dui4 = “reply; answer; treat; cope with; confront; be trained on; to face; bring into contact; suit agree; fit; compare; set; right; correct; add; mix; adulterate; divide into halves; pair; couple; concerning; regarding” This is one of those words that means just about everything in the right context. But one of the pretty standard uses is “oriented towards” or “with respect to” or “facing”.
  

Now you can put all this together and you get:

空对地导弹 = kong1 dui4 di4 dao3 dan4 = “emptiness facing earth guide bomb” = air-to-surface guided missile !!

You can create some obvious variants on this phrase. How about:

• 地对空导弹 = surface-to-air guided missile (just switch di4 and kong1)
  
•  空对水下导弹 = air-to-underwater guided missile (just add 水= shui3 = water, and 下 = xia4 = under, and you get 水下 = shui3xia4 = underwater).