About
The character 哩, constructed from the mouth radical 口 and the phonetic element 里, originally served as a phonetic borrowing to capture certain auditory qualities or as a dialectal particle in spoken language. Its semantic scope gradually broadened to encompass the designation of a unit of distance, the mile, which was incorporated into Chinese from English, marking a shift from its initial phonetic and grammatical roles toward a concrete lexical meaning. This adaptation in function occurred without alteration to the character's graphical form, maintaining the consistent pairing of its components where 里 offers phonetic suggestion while 口 alludes to its association with speech or sound.
Example Sentences Hide
你在干什么哩？
天气真好哩！
他还在睡觉哩。
这本书很有趣哩。
你吃饭了没有哩？
那个地方很远哩。
他为什么不来哩？
虽然下雨了，但我们还是要去哩。