Pictophonetic characters refer to a method of creating Chinese characters, which is mainly adapted from the original pictographic characters, signifier characters and knowing characters, and indicates the categories of things according to the fonts.
Pictophonetic characters are a method of creating Chinese characters, which are mainly adapted from the original pictographic characters, signifier characters and knowing characters, and represent the categories of things according to the fonts. There are many combinations of pictophonetic characters and phonetic symbols, such as left and right hands: clear, loose and market; Left voice and right shape: merit, leadership and salvation; Up and down: dew, flowers, hills; Upper voice and lower form: fierce, forgetful and alert; Internal voice: smell, stuffy, braid; The inner voice of modeling: roundness, elegance and sincerity.
Pictophonetic characters are a form of Chinese characters, which are formed on the basis of pictographic characters, signifier characters and knowing characters. They are composed of two words or words, and they are composed of signifiers representing meaning categories. Pictophonetic characters are the most effective way of word formation. Generally, ideographic characters or signifiers are used as symbols, while phonetic symbols can be used as pictographs, signifiers and cognitive characters.
The so-called analogy is to take a text or word with the same or similar pronunciation according to spoken language as the phonetic part of new words. In this way, the two parts of doctrine and phonetics complement each other and form a new word.
The word "river" quoted by Xu Shen was originally written for the Yangtze River and the Yellow River. Because rivers belong to water, everyone uses "water" as the socialist part of the word. Then, according to the pronunciation of calling rivers in spoken language, the phonetic parts of "Gong" and "Ke" are selected respectively, and the two pictophonetic characters of rivers are formed.
Functional significance:
Judging from the development of Chinese characters, pictophonetic characters not only break through the limitations of pictographs, reference characters and cognitive characters, but also find a simple method for many pictographs and things that are intentionally difficult to understand. More importantly, it makes up for the defect that pictographs, referents and cognitive characters cannot be directly marked.
In order to record language symbols, if words can't be pronounced, it is extremely inconvenient to use, so they can't last long. Therefore, in the world, the transition from ideographic to phonetic is the same law of the development and evolution of all characters. Although China's Chinese characters have not evolved into pure phonography.
However, due to the invention of pictophonetic characters and their rapid increase, pictophonetic characters soon occupied an absolute advantage in later Chinese characters (more than 85% are used today), which greatly strengthened the phonetic function of Chinese characters, and also showed that Chinese characters in China also developed and evolved according to the same phonetic rules, and pictophonetic characters played a great role.