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Phonetic Loan Character




The first Chinese characters were characters were used to express these meanings. This is called phonetic borrowing. The original meaning of the character was either dropped, or a second character was created, where the original character was used as a Phonetic Element and the meaning was indicated by a Radical .

Since the original meanings of the characters are pictographic, they describe things that are elementary and easy to draw, such as animals, body parts and thigs found in nature.

Note: The origins of many Chinese characters are debated, and there are very likely to be different etymologies in other works.


REFERENCE


  • Wang Hongyuan: ''The Origins of Chinese characters''. Sinolingua Beijing, 1993, ISBN 7-80052-243-1