iable qualities, e.g.
[Ch][Ch] "jealous," [Ch][Ch] "treacherous," [Ch] "false" and [Ch]
"uncanny." This class of characters, which constitutes at least
nine-tenths of the language, has received the convenient name of
_phonograms_. It must be added that the formation of the phonogram or
phonetic compound did not always proceed along such simple lines as in
the examples given above, where both parts are pictorial characters, one
the "phonetic," representing the sound, and the other, commonly known as
the "radical," giving a clue to the sense. In the first place, most of
the phonetics now existing are not simple pictograms, but themselves
more or less complex characters made up in a variety of ways. On
analysing, for instance, the word [Ch] _hsuen_, "to withdraw," we find it
is composed of the phonetic [Ch] combined with the radical [Ch], an
abbreviated form of [Ch] "to walk." But [Ch] _sun_ means "grandson," and
is itself a suggestive compound made up of the two characters [Ch] "a
son" and [Ch] "connect." The former character is a simple pictogram, but
the latter is again resolvable into the two elements [Ch] "a down stroke
to the left" and [Ch] "a strand of silk," which is here understood to be
the radical and appears in its ancient form as [Ch], a picture of
cocoons spun by the silkworm. Again, the sound is in most cases given by
no means exactly by the so-called phonetic, a fact chiefly due to the
pronunciation having undergone changes which the written character was
incapable of recording. Thus, we have just seen that the phonetic of
[Ch] is not _hsuen_ but _sun_. There are extreme cases in which a
phonetic provides hardly any clue at all as to the sound of its
derivatives. The character [Ch], for example, which by itself is
pronounced _ch'ien_, appears in combination as the modern phonetic of
[Ch] _k'an_, [Ch] _juan_, [Ch] _yin_ and [Ch] _ch'ui_; though in the
last instance it was not originally the phonetic but the radical of a
character which was analysed as [Ch] _ch'ien_, "to emit breath" from
[Ch] "the mouth," the whole character being a suggestive compound rather
than an illustration of radical and phonetic combined. In general,
however, it may be said that the "final" or rhyme is pretty accurately
indicated, while in not a few cases the phonetic does give the exact
sound for all its derivatives. Thus, the characters in which the element
[Ch] enters are pronounced _chien, ch'ien, hsien_ and _lien_; but [Ch]
and i