The word 喇叭 is formed through a combination of semantic and phonetic principles. Both characters contain the "mouth" radical (口) on the left, visually signaling that the word relates to something involving the mouth or producing sound. The right-side components of each character, 剌 (là) and 叭 (ba), primarily provide phonetic clues, coming together to approximate the sound "làba". This sound is itself onomatopoeic, imitating the blast of a trumpet or the amplified noise of a loudspeaker, making the entire compound a phonosemantic representation of the object it names.