| Abstract: | On the basis of former research, Xu Shen proposed six approaches of the ancients inventing words, i.e. self-explanatory characters, pictographic characters, pictophonetic characters, associative compounds, synonymous characters and phonetic loan characters. Chinese originate from pictographs, then followed by self-explanatory characters, associative compounds and phonetic loan characters. Pictophonetic characters emerged later, however, it has gradually become the principal part. More than ninety percent of modem Chinese are pictophonetic characters. Owing to history, the pictographic element of modern pictophonetic characters comparably cannot express its meaning obviously and nearly half of phonetic element of a Chinese pictophonetic character are unworthy of the name. |
