The word 吉他 (jí tā) for "guitar" is formed through a process of phonetic borrowing, where two existing Chinese characters are selected not for their meanings, but specifically for how closely their sounds approximate the syllables of the foreign word "gui-tar". Thus, the character 吉 (jí) mimics the "gi" sound and 他 (tā) mimics the "tar" sound, combining to create a new term that replicates the original English pronunciation within the constraints of Mandarin phonetics.