ancients wanted to write something for which they knew no character, they would borrow another character which had the same or a similar sound. For example, in ancient China there were two different words both pronounced somewhat like English “lug”: one was the name for growing grain, which was written with the pictograph 來, and the other was the verb “to come,” which as yet had no character. Someone came up with the then novel idea of writing “to come” with the borrowed character 來 “grain.” Though the original meaning “grain” and the borrowed meaning “to come” coexisted for a period of time, eventually, in this particular case, “to come” won out, with the result that in modern Chinese that is the only possible meaning of the character. After phonetic-semantic compounds (see below), the borrowed characters constitute the second-largest category of characters. They also played an important role in the simplification of characters in the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, along with the phonetic-semantic compounds, they help make the case that even in ancient times, Chinese characters were largely phonetic in nature. But though the context would often clarify the meaning of borrowed characters, sometimes there were ambiguities. The problem of avoiding ambiguities when borrowing characters for their sound gave rise to the next category of characters, which today accounts for the great majority of characters in the language.
5. 形声字 ( 形聲字 ) Xíngshēngzì “Phonetic-Semantic Compounds.” In trying to solve the problem of avoiding ambiguities, the ancient Chinese hit upon the idea of combining the sound-borrowing principle of the Jiăjièzì with the semantic principle of the first three categories of characters to create compound characters, one part of which—called the phonetic, often on the right side of a character—would indicate the sound; and the other part of which—called the semantic, often on the left side of a character—would indicate the meaning.
Take the common Chinese noun pronounced mā, meaning “mom” or “mother.” At some point in the past when this word did not yet have a character associated with it, some Chinese writer who wanted to write this word borrowed the character 馬 mă “horse” to represent the sound of mā (the two words are pronounced identically except for tone) but made a crucially important addition: he or she added to the left of 馬 the character 女 nǚ “woman” to indicate to the reader, first, that a word different from 馬 was meant; and, second, that the word had something to do with “woman.” And so was created the character 媽 mā “mom, mother.” Similarly, consider 螞 mă “ant,” which is made up of the same phonetic element plus the semantic element 虫 chóng “insect”; or the question particle 嗎 ma, composed of the same phonetic plus the semantic 口 kŏu “mouth,” which indicates that this is a word often used in speech.
Here are examples of several groups of phonetic-semantic compounds:
In the above examples, which were carefully chosen to illustrate the principle of Xíngshēngzì, there are fairly close correlations between the sound of the phonetic and the sound of the compound. Unfortunately, due to sound change and interdialectal borrowing over the course of many centuries, plus the fact that the “fit” for some phonetics was never exact to begin with but only approximate, many of the correlations have become obscured, so that the phonetic information contained in phonetic-semantic compounds today is often inexact.
The phonetics of Chinese characters are a little like different vowel and consonant combinations in English. In English, we have many regular sound-to-writing correspondences, like the combination “-ill” that is pronounced the same way in all words ending in “-ill,” for example, “pill,” “kill,” and “hill.” But we also have some irregular correspondences like “-ove” which can have several different pronunciations, for example, “shove,” “cove,” and “prove.” Chinese phonetics are typically like the irregular English correspondences, with one phonetic often representing two or three common pronunciations.
In groups of different characters sharing the same phonetic, the final is the most likely to be similar, the initial is the next most likely to be similar, and the tone is the least likely to be similar. Even when the initials or finals of different characters in a phonetic series are different, they are often still phonetically related, that is, they may all be labial sounds made with the lips like [b p f]; or they may all be sounds made with the velum in the back of the mouth like [g k h]; or they may all end in the same consonant like [-eng -ing].
As for the semantics in phonetic-semantic compounds, they can provide only a hint as to the meaning of the character, for example, “related to water” or “made of metal” or “type of fish.” Sometimes the semantic seems illogical, but that may be due to changes in culture and society since the system of semantics was first devised; for example, 枕 zhĕn “pillow” is written with the semantic 木 mù “wood,” but that is because formerly Chinese pillows were indeed made of wood. The semantic element of a Chinese character is in English more commonly referred to as the radical of the character, because Chinese dictionaries have traditionally been organized based on a sequence of 214 radicals, arranged in a set order from those with the least number of strokes to those with the most strokes. The radical of a character usually corresponds to its semantic, though there are some exceptions. While the system of phonetics and the system of semantics (or radicals) of Chinese characters are inexact and involve many inconsistencies, they can still be quite useful for guessing the pronunciations and meanings of unfamiliar characters, or for learning and remembering new ones. Native Chinese readers make use of them in their reading, and we’ll be exploiting them to their fullest potential in this book.
6. 转注 ( 轉注 ) Zhuănzhù “Mutually Explanatory Characters.” The sixth category of characters mentioned in the Shuōwén Jiĕzì is termed 转注 ( 轉注 ) Zhuănzhù. These involve pairs of words that are phonetically and semantically similar, where one word in each pair already had a character associated with it but the other did not. Subsequently, a character was created for the word without a character by modifying the existing character for the other word in the pair. Most Zhuănzhù characters are no longer in use, but one commonly cited example is the pair 老 lăo “old” and 考 kăo “deceased father.” Since the Zhuănzhù make up the smallest category in the Liùshū and since not even specialists are in agreement as to their exact nature, we shall not discuss this category in more detail here.
CURSIVE SCRIPT
In addition to the types of characters discussed above, which are the Kăishū standard printed or carefully handwritten forms of characters, there also exist cursive forms of characters. In the same way that when writing English by hand we normally connect letters (i.e., we don’t usually print little but instead write the word with connected strokes as little), Chinese writers also usually connect many of the strokes of characters when writing by hand.
Depending on a number of factors such as the formality of the occasion, the educational level of the writer and person written to, the personal preferences of the writer, and how much of a hurry the writer happens to be in, there will be wide variation in the degree of cursiveness of any particular piece of handwriting. Handwritten Chinese containing a moderate degree of cursiveness is quite common and is known as 连笔字 ( 連筆字 ) Liánbĭzì “Connected Characters” or 行书 ( 行書 ) Xíngshū “Running Script.” We’ll be introducing a small amount of slightly cursive handwriting later in this course. A more extreme degree of cursiveness is termed 草书 ( 草書 ) Căoshū “Grass Script” and is, fortunately for the foreign learner of the language, much less
