Types

There are six types of characters in terms of how they came about. The first were simply pictures of object seen in every day life. Known as pictographs, they were simply drawings of the object. Note we say "were" because over 3,000 years they have changed considerably, and may no longer look like the object they were originally modeled on.

Drawings of objects only gets you so far, however, and soon the Chinese had to be able to represent concepts. One way to do that was with characters known as ideographs. These are relatively straightforward representation of concepts that are not objects. The character for 'above' was originally just a dot above a line.

The third type are more complex ideas, created by combining two characters to make a third. For example, the sun and the moon are the brightest objects known to man, so the character for 'bright' is the sun and the moon combined into one character. For a further look at characters like this, see here.

The fourth type is, in terms of numbers of characters - 85% of those in common use today - the largest. These are known as sound and meaning, or shape and sound, or semantic-phonetic, and are a combination of a phonetic element - the sound - and a radical - the meaning. In each case, the spoken word already existed, so they borrowed a word that was pronounced the same, and added a radical to lend it meaning. This is why there are many cases where several characters have the same sound element and different radicals.

The last two types are not very common. One is called 'false borrowing,' when a character with the same sound was simply taken to represent an additional meaning. The other is known as 'extended meaning' or 'mutual interpretation.' Here, one character is altered to create a new one with a different pronunciation but a similar meaning.

The following explanation comes from an unknown source. It is used in several websites, none of which actually wrote it. My apologies to the original author for not being able to give credit. It may have come from https://www.chinaknowledge.de, an excellent source of information.

The Six Types of Characters
The Han time scholar Xu Shen 許慎(d. 147 AD) who wrote the great dictionary Shuowen jiezi說文解字"Explaining Simple and Analyzing Compound Characters", divided the Chinese characters into six different types (liushu六書):

xiangxing象形: "depicting the shape", about 600 characters, pictures of concrete things or abstract things:
- o "sun" 日, "moon" 月, "evening" 夕
- o "child" 子, "wife" 女; "mother" 母(wife with breasts)
- o "tree" 木, "rain" 雨, "dog" 犬, "bird" 鳥, "hand" 手or 又, "foot" 足, "heart" 心
- o "eyebrow" 眉(eye 目and brow )
- o "exchange" 交(old: ; two crossed legs)
- o "board" 片(old: ; half of a tree 木, old: ).
zhishi指事(also called chushi處事or xiangshi象事): "pointing at situations" ("placing situations" or "depicting situations"), marking a character with a dot or a stroke to indicate a part of it:
- o "above" 上; the "blade" of a knife 刃; the "root" of a tree 本; the four cardinal "directions" 方; the "center" of a butt 中; the "border" between fields 畺
- o "blood" 血(blood in a vessel 皿during an oath ceremony)
- o "deficient" 乏(a "correct" 正turned upside down; old ); "minister" 司, turned to 后"empress".
huiyi會意(also called xiangyi象意): "combining meanings" ("depicting meanings"), combined image of an abstract sense:
- o "dawn" 旦(the sun 日over the horizon)
- o "public" 公(opening 八a market place ㄙ)
- o "trusting" 信(a man 人speaking 言)
- o "bright" 明(sun 日and moon 月)
- o "burning" 炎; "flames" 焱(two and three fires 火); "standing side by side" 竝(double "standing"立, modern shape 並)
- o Sometimes one of the parts is abridged (sheng 省), like "lame, slow" jian蹇from 足"foot" and 寒"cold", leaving out the two dots.
zhuanzhu轉注: "mutually interpretation (tautology)", creating a new character from an old one to differ between words with the same meaning but with slightly different pronunciation
- o "old" 老lao and "aged" 考kao
- o "give back" 返fan and "turn back" 還huan
- o or "tip of a branch" 標biao and "end of a stalk" 杪miao. A rare type.
jiajie假借: "false borrowing", borrowing a character for a word that is pronounced equally but has a totally different meaning:
- o 我(a kind of axe 戈) for "me"
- o 來(a kind of grain; modern form 麥) for "coming"
- o 足"foot", also meaning "enough"
- o 卒(a kind of slave clothing) for "slave", "soldier", "ending", "dead", "at last", "suddenly"

Most of these characters have lost their original sense. Many grammatical particles without particular meaning are of this type, making it necessary to create a new character for the original meaning:

o 乃nai "breast", borrowed for nai "therefore", creating the new character 奶for "breast, milk" with the radical 女"woman"
o 其qi "basket", borrowed for qi "his, her, its", creating the new character 箕(modern pronunciation ji) for "basket" with the radical 竹"bamboo"
o The character 之zhi originally means "to go", but it is also used as a genetive particle ("his"), an object pronoun ("him") and sometimes as demonstrative pronoun ("this"), without having lost its original meaning.
o The character bi 辟"standard" is used as a phonetic representative in place of the characters pi 僻"unusual", pi 闢"opening", bi 避"avoiding", and pi 劈"cleaving".

This kind of character shows that Chinese characters could also be used only with their sound, thus creating a kind of syllable script. The Japanese Hiragana and Katakana alphabets follow the same pattern.

xingsheng形聲(also called xiesheng諧聲or xiangsheng象聲): "shape and sound" ("harmonizing with sound" or "depicting sounds"), a combination of a "classifier", "determinant" or "radical" (sphere of word sense) and a sound:
- o 梨li "pear" from 木"tree" and the sound 利li
- o 掌zhang "controlling" from 手"hand" and the sound 尚shang

Some of the phonetic parts are also used with their true meaning:

o "the middle of three" zhong仲from 人"man" and 中zhong "middle"
o "to lie" 誣wu from 言"speaking" and 巫wu "sorcerer"
o or the character set of 包bao "package": 苞bao "bud" (with 艹"grass"), 胞bao "placenta" (with 肉"flesh"), 雹bao "hail" (with 雨"rain"), 飽bao "full stomach" (with 食"eating"), 抱bao "embracing" (with 手"hand"), 泡pao "foam" (with 水"water"), all of them describing ball- or package-like things.

Other characters use the phonetical part as a philosophical interpretation:

o If a banished person was allowed to come back to his home, he was sent a half-circle jade ring. This type of ring was called huan 環playing with the word huan 還"to return".
o Bats are thought to be ominous animals, bringing luck and prosperity (fu 福). Therefore, bats are called fu 蝠.

Bullet Point Summary

There are six types of characters, in terms of how they came about:
*Pictographs: pictures of objects;
*Ideographs: chaarcters that describe a concept;
*Compound Pictographs/Compound Ideographs: combinations of characters that describe another concept;
*Semantic-phonetic: a combination of a radical (meaning element) and a phonetic (sound element); these make up 85% of characters in common use today;
*False borrowing: not very common, when a character with the same sound as another word was used for its meaning as well;
*Extended meaning: not very common, this is where a character is altered slightly to become the character for a word with a different sound but similar meaning.

Types

Bullet Point Summary

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