The Chinese word 披萨 (pīsà) for "pizza" is a direct phonetic loanword, formed through a process of transliteration where two Chinese characters are chosen primarily for their sound to approximate the pronunciation of the English word "pizza". The first character, 披 (pī), mimics the "pee" sound, while the second character, 萨 (sà), approximates the "sa" sound. Importantly, the individual meanings of these characters (披 can mean "to drape" or "to spread", and 萨 is used in transliterations like 菩萨 for "bodhisattva") are irrelevant in this context; their sole function is to replicate the foreign word's sound, which is a standard method for adopting foreign nouns into Chinese.