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The Formation of Chinese Characters

The presumed methods of forming characters was first classified by the Chinese linguist Xu Shen (許
慎), whose etymological dictionary Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字) divides the script into six categories,
or liushu ( 六書): pictographic characters, (xiangxing zi 象形字), self-explanatory characters (zhishi
zi 指示字), associative compounds (huiyi zi 會意字), pictophonetic characters (xingsheng zi 形聲字),
mutually explanatory characters (zhuanzhu zi 轉注字), and phonetic loan characters (jiajie zi 假借字).
The first four categories refer to ways of composing Chinese characters; the last two categorizes ways
of using characters.

It is a popular myth that Chinese writing is pictographic, or that each Chinese character represents a
picture. Some Chinese characters evolved from pictures, many of which are the earliest characters
found on oracle bones, but such pictographic characters comprise only a small proportion (about
4%) of characters. The vast majority are pictophonetic characters consisting of a “radical,” indicating
the meaning and a phonetic component for the original sound, which may be different from modern
pronunciation.