→ 象形・指事・形声・会意・転注・仮借
- 象形(Shôkei) form imitation - 物の形をかたどって字形を作ること。
日・月・木・耳など。 - Roughly 600 Chinese characters are pictograms (象形 xiang xing, "form imitation") stylised drawings of the objects they represent. These are generally among the oldest characters. A few, indicated below with their earliest forms, date back to oracle bones from the twelfth century BCE.
- 指事(Shiji) indication - 位置や状態といった抽象概念を字形の組み合わせで表すこと。
上・下・本・末など- Ideograms (指事 shiji, "indication") express an abstract idea through an iconic form, including iconic modification of pictograph characters. In the examples below, low numerals are represented by the appropriate number of strokes, directions by an iconic indication above and below a line, and the parts of a tree by marking the appropriate part of a pictograph of a tree.
- 形声(Keisei) sound agreement - 類型的な意味を表す意符と音を表す音符とを組み合わせて字を作ること。
江・河など- These are often called radical-phonetic characters. They form the majority of Chinese characters by far over 90%, and were created by combining a rebus with a determinative that is, a character with approximately the correct pronunciation (the phonetic element, similar to a phonetic complement) with one of a limited number of determinative characters which supplied an element of meaning (the semantic element, called a "radical", which centuries later would be used to organize characters in a dictionary). As in ancient Egyptian writing, such compounds eliminated the ambiguity caused by phonetic loans (above). Phono-semantic compounds appeared prior to the first attested Chinese writing on Shang Dynasty oracle bones.
Most often, the radical is on one side (often the left), while the phonetic is on the other side (often the right), as in 沐 = 5l "water" + 木 mu. Also common is for the semantic and phonetic elements to be stacked on top of each other, as in 菜 = y・"plant" + 采 cﾎ i. More rarely, the phonetic may be placed inside the semantic, as in 園 = 囗 "enclosure" + 袁, or 街 = 行 "go, movement" + 圭. More complicated combinations also exist, such as 勝 = 力 "strength" + 朕, where the semantic is in the lower-right quadrant, and the phonetic is the other three quadrants.
This process can be repeated, with a phono-semantic compound character itself being used as a phonetic in a further compound, which can result in quite complex characters, such as 劇 (f・= 虍 + 豕, 劇 = R + f・.
- These are often called radical-phonetic characters. They form the majority of Chinese characters by far over 90%, and were created by combining a rebus with a determinative that is, a character with approximately the correct pronunciation (the phonetic element, similar to a phonetic complement) with one of a limited number of determinative characters which supplied an element of meaning (the semantic element, called a "radical", which centuries later would be used to organize characters in a dictionary). As in ancient Egyptian writing, such compounds eliminated the ambiguity caused by phonetic loans (above). Phono-semantic compounds appeared prior to the first attested Chinese writing on Shang Dynasty oracle bones.
- 会意(Kaii) joined meaning - 象形と指事によって作られたものを組み合わせて新しい意味を表す字を作ること。信・武・林・炎など
- In ideogrammatic compounds (會意 huì yì, "joined meaning"), also called associative compounds or logical aggregates, two or more pictographic or ideographic characters are combined to suggest a third meaning. For example, the character 各 gè originally meant "to arrive". (It was long ago borrowed for "each".) The oracle-bone form of this compound, very similar to the modern glyph, shows 夂 a foot (the inverted form of 止 zhǐ, originally a foot) at a 凵 or 口 walled object, perhaps a dwelling. The meaning of "arrive" is thus suggested jointly, as a footstep at the door.
- As these characters became more stylized over time, one or more of the components was often compressed or abbreviated. For example, the character 人 "human" was reduced to 亻, 水 "water" to 氵, and 艸 "grass" to 艹.
- It is unclear whether a logical link induces a character layout, or the opposite, the association being a mnemonic artifact of striking truth. Juxtaposition of "woman" and "child" could as well be interpreted as "maternal love" or "weakness".
- 転注(Tenchû) reciprocal meaning - 用字法の一つとする説が有力であるが、定説はない。
- The derivative cognate (轉注 zhuﾎ n zhu, "reciprocal meaning") is a classification of purely historical value, and is the least understood of the liushu principles of character formation. It may refer to characters which have similar meanings and often the same etymological root, but which have diverged in pronunciation and meaning. The English words chance and cadence would fit this pattern, as they share a common Latin root, cadentia "(a) fall". If English were written the way Chinese is, these two words might have similar characters.
The characters 老 lﾎ o "old" and 考 kﾎ o "a test" are the most commonly cited example. The words derive from a common etymological root (approximately *klao’[citation needed]), and the characters differ only in the modification of one part.
- The derivative cognate (轉注 zhuﾎ n zhu, "reciprocal meaning") is a classification of purely historical value, and is the least understood of the liushu principles of character formation. It may refer to characters which have similar meanings and often the same etymological root, but which have diverged in pronunciation and meaning. The English words chance and cadence would fit this pattern, as they share a common Latin root, cadentia "(a) fall". If English were written the way Chinese is, these two words might have similar characters.
- 仮借(Kashaku) making use of - 他の同音・類字音の字を借用すること。「わたし」の意味に「我」、「そうだ」の意味に「然」、「くる」の意味に「来」など。四、葉、北、背、要、腰、少、沙、砂、永
- Jiajie (假借 jiﾎ jie, "borrowing; making use of") are characters that are "borrowed" to write another homophonous or near-homophonous morpheme, comparable with using "4" as a rebus for English "for" in "4ever". For example, the character 來 was originally a pictogram of a wheat plant and meant *mlY k "wheat". As this was pronounced similarly to the Old Chinese word *lai "to come", 來 was also used to write this verb. Eventually the more common usage, the verb "to come", became established as the default reading of the character 來, and a new character 麥 was devised for "wheat". (The modern pronunciations are lai and mai.) When a character is used as a rebus this way, it is called a jiajiezi 假借字 (lit. "loaned and borrowed character") (in Wade-Giles "chia-chie" or "chia-chieh"), translatable as "phonetic loan character" or "rebus character".
