Culture · 6 pages · 12 min

Why Chinese characters are not a purely pictorial script

Most characters pair a hint of meaning with a hint of sound, and pictures are the minority.

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From the opening

Chinese characters are not a purely pictorial script because most of them combine a clue to meaning with a clue to pronunciation. A character stands for a morpheme, usually one syllable long, rather than for a drawing of a thing. The opening covers phono-semantic compounds dominate, a character writes a morpheme, and sound hints go stale over time.

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Inside

Phono-semantic compounds dominate
A character writes a morpheme
Sound hints go stale over time
Pictographs are the small set
Where the idea stops applying
A distinction worth keeping

Sources

Phono-semantic compound characters
The traditional six categories of character formation

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Why Chinese characters are not a purely pictorial script

From the opening

Inside

Sources

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