This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
Author: Huang Zhe
Link: https://www.zhihu.com/question/53168651/answer/143639955
Source: Zhihu
Others have already said a great deal; I will only add a little about the sounds of Chinese characters (drawing mostly on the traditional Zhang-Huang school of philology), for reference only.
Chinese characters are divided by the Six Scripts (liushu): pictographic, indicative, compound-ideative and phono-semantic are principles of character creation, while loan and transfer characters are not principles of creation but only methods of use. Following Mr. Huang Jigang, the four principles of creation can be divided into two classes:
Soundless characters: pictographic, indicative and compound-ideative characters, which have no phonetic component representing the sound of the character
Sounded characters: that is, phono-semantic characters, which have a semantic component and a phonetic component
And the phonetic components of phono-semantic characters ultimately derive from the class of soundless characters (that is, pictographic and indicative characters; compound-ideative characters themselves can be broken down into pictographic and indicative characters).
For example: 莳 takes 艸 as its form and 时 as its sound.
时 takes 日 as its form and 寺 as its sound.
寺 takes 寸 as its form and ㄓ as its sound.
ㄓ (that is, 之) is an indicative character.
Here 寺, 时 and 莳 are all phono-semantic characters, while ㄓ is an indicative character, not a phono-semantic one, that is, a soundless character. This soundless character ㄓ is the most primitive phonetic of 寺, 时 and 莳, and is also called the “sound mother” (声母); the phono-semantic characters 寺, 时 and 莳 all multiplied from this sound mother ㄓ and are called “sound children” (声子).
The phonetic components of phono-semantic characters may or may not also express meaning:
Phonetics that also express meaning: this is the main case. Duan Yucai, in his Annotations on the Shuowen Jiezi, put forward the ideas that “sound and meaning share a common origin” and that “phono-semantic characters mostly also combine meanings.” Phonetics record language, and the meaning of many phonetics comes from a common phonetic form, which traditional exegetics calls the “word root.” For example, 泓, 洪, 鸿 and 宏 are all read hong2, and all share the common meaning of “great.” Or, as Shen Kuo says in Dream Pool Essays: “For instance, 戋 means small. Small water is called 浅 (shallow); small metal is called 钱 (coin); small 歹 is called 残 (remnant); small 贝 is called 贱 (cheap).”
Phonetics that do not express meaning: for example, animals named by imitating their sounds, 鸡 (chicken), 鸭 (duck), 猫 (cat) and 狗 (dog), with the onomatopoeic phonetics 奚, 甲 (anciently pronounced something like ga), 苗 and 句 (anciently close to gou); and transliterated foreign words such as the chemical elements 铀 (Uranium), 镭 (Radium) and 锌 (Zinc)
As @思读墟士 pointed out, the relationship between phono-semantic characters and their phonetics falls into the following cases:
(1) Identical initial and rhyme: 牲 and its phonetic 生 are both 所庚切; their ancient initials and rhymes are the same
(2) Same initial, different rhyme: 思. Shuowen: “To contain; it takes 心 as its form and 囟 as its sound.” Note: 思 is 息兹切, ancient initial 心, Duan Yucai’s ancient rhyme group 1 (之 group); 囟 is 息进切, ancient initial 心, Duan Yucai’s ancient rhyme group 12 (真 group).
(3) Different initial, same rhyme: 胡. Shuowen: “The dewlap (顄, han4) of an ox; it takes 肉 as its form and 古 as its sound.” Note: 胡 is 户孤切, ancient initial 匣, ancient rhyme group 5 (鱼 group); 古 is 公户切, ancient initial 见, ancient rhyme group 5.
(4) Different initial and different rhyme: 妃. Shuowen: “Mate. It takes 女 as its form and 己 as its sound.” Note: 妃 is 芳菲切, ancient initial 滂, ancient rhyme group 15 (脂 group); 己 is 居拟切, ancient initial 见, ancient rhyme group 1 (之 group). Initial and rhyme are both different.
Phono-semantic characters of the first kind, with identical initial and rhyme, are relatively few. Most are of the second and third kinds, mainly as a result of historical sound change. This is also why phono-semantic characters are a clue for inferring ancient pronunciation (for example, 反 should be read with the bilabial stop of 版, 板 and so on; that is, initials that are now [f-] were read [b-] or [p-] in Middle Chinese or earlier); on the other hand, it shows that phono-semantic characters express meaning while also containing a phonetic element. As for the fourth case, according to Mr. Huang Jigang’s explanation, this phenomenon is due to “soundless characters having multiple sounds”:
1. Same image but different meaning taken: when characters were first created, they depicted the images of external things, but characters were not created at one time, in one place or by one person, and people often coincidentally created the same image while taking different meanings from it. For example, the character 「︱」. Shuowen: “︱ means passing through from top to bottom. Drawn upward, it is read like 囟; drawn downward, it is read like 退.” This may be because, when characters were created, people in place A created 「︱」 and gave it the meaning “passing through from bottom to top,” with the reading 古本切 (now read gun3); people in place B also created a 「︱」 drawn from bottom to top, with the same image, but gave it the meaning “advancing upward,” read like 囟 (now read xin4); people in place C also created a 「︱」 drawn from top to bottom, but gave it the meaning “retreating downward,” read like 退 (now read tui4). When writing was later unified, the same form 「︱」 indeed had three sounds and three meanings. This is an important reason why soundless characters have multiple sounds.
2. Errors due to similar forms: this refers to characters that were originally not the same character and differed in sound and meaning but had similar forms; later people failed to notice and merged them into one, thus producing multiple readings. For example, 「皂」: the Shuowen originally explains its basic meaning as “the fragrance of grain,” read like 香; there was another character 「皂」, which the Yupian says means “black in color,” read 才老切 (now read zao4). These two characters originally differed in sound and meaning, but because their forms were similar, in later ages 「皂」 was miswritten as 「皂」, as in 肥皂 (soap), and so 「皂」 came to have two sounds and two meanings.
3. Loans: in ancient times there were few characters, so characters were often borrowed, which also produced multiple readings. For example, 「屮」: the Shuowen explains it as “plants first sprouting,” read like 彻 (now read che4), but in ancient texts it was also often borrowed for 「艸」, so 「屮」 also acquired the reading of 「艸」 (now read) cao3, and thus 「屮」 came to have two sounds and two meanings.
4. Abbreviated phonetics overlapping with other characters: because an “abbreviated phonetic” is a shortened form of the phonetic component, and the shortened form may be identical to another character, the readings became confused, producing multiple readings. For example, 「頨」: the Shuowen explains its basic meaning as “頨妍” (graceful) and says it takes 翩 abbreviated as its sound, read like 翩; but after the phonetic 翩 was abbreviated to 羽, later people read it according to the sound of 羽 as 王矩切 (yu3), so 頨 came to have two readings.
Because, among the many meanings of a soundless character, the sounds of its common meanings were mostly preserved while the sounds of its rare meanings gradually disappeared and were not passed down, phono-semantic characters derived from soundless characters with multiple sounds ultimately show discordant relationships of initial and rhyme between character and phonetic, as in 「己：妃」 and 「其：斯」.
In summary, Chinese characters are in fact a unity of form, sound and meaning, and cannot be divided so as to discuss any one part alone. Although phono-semantic characters, including the use of loans and some transfers, are indeed related to sound, Chinese characters are still mostly primarily ideographic (because the phonetics of phono-semantic characters also mostly express meaning). Western scripts are based on letters, and a single letter has no independent meaning; it has some meaning only when combined into a syllable. That is why Chinese characters are said to be an ideographic writing system, while Western scripts are phonetic writing systems.
