g] were used
for all alike, confusion would of necessity arise. To remedy this, it
occurred to some one in very early ages to make [ding], and other
similar pictures of things or ideas, serve as what we now call
Phonetics, _i.e._ the part which suggests the sound of the character,
and to add in each case an indicator of the special sense intended to be
conveyed. Thus, taking [ding] as the phonetic base, in order to express
_ting_, "a boil," the indicator for "disease," [chuang], was added,
making [ding]; for _ting_, "the top," the indicator for "head," [ye],
was added, making [ding]; for "to command," the symbol for "mouth,"
[kou] was added, making [ding]; for "nail," and also for "ingot," the
symbol for "metal," [jin], was added, making [ding]; and for "to
arrange," the symbol for "speech," [yan], was added, making [ding]. We
thus obtain five new words, which, so far as the written language is
concerned, are easily distinguishable one from another, namely, _ting_
"a sting," disease-_ting_ = "a boil," head-_ting_ = "the top,"
mouth-_ting_ = "to command," metal-_ting_ = "a nail," speech-_ting_ =
"to arrange." In like manner, the words for "mouth," "to rap," and "a
button," were all pronounced _k'ou_. Having got [kou] _k'ou_ as the
picture of a mouth, that was taken as the phonetic base, and to express
"to rap," the symbol for "hand," [shou] or [CJK:624C], was added, making
[kou]; while to express "button," the symbol for "metal," [jin] was
added, making [kou]. So that we have _k'ou_ = "mouth," hand-_k'ou_ = "to
rap," and metal-_k'ou_ = "button."

Let us take a picture of an idea. We have [dong] _tung_ = the sun seen
through the trees,--"the east." When the early Chinese wished to write
down _tung_ "to freeze," they simply took the already existing [dong] as
the phonetic base, and added to it "an icicle," [bing], thus [dong]. And
when they wanted to write down _tung_ "a beam," instead of "icicle,"
they put the obvious indicator [mu] "wood," thus [dong].

We have now got the two portions into which the vast majority of Chinese
characters can be easily resolved.

There is first the phonetic base, itself a character originally intended
to represent some thing or idea, and then borrowed to represent other
things and ideas similarly pronounced; and secondly, the indicator,
another character added to the phonetic base in order to distinguish
between the various things and ideas for which the same phonetic base
was used.

A