Hansen's Chinese 5H Weebly Portfolio

六书-Six Methods of Creating Chinese Characters

1.      象形—Pictograms: These characters are made based upon the visual likeness of the object. The representation is often simplified to facilitate writing.
哭, 人,火,草,门

2.       指事—Ideograms: These type of characters are made by directly modifying some pictograms or by direct iconic translations.
上,下,凹,刃,一,二,三

3.       会意—Ideogrammic Compounds: These characters combine pictograms and ideograms to form a third character.
林,森,好,忍,明

4.       形声—Photo-Semantic Compounds: The most numerous type of Chinese characters, these characters are made by combining an idealized character giving the meaning and another character giving the pronunciation.
河,江,湖,房,冲

5.       转注—Transformed Cognates: These are rare characters that originally represented the same meaning, but later drifted apart.
老,考,孝,窍,空

6.       假借—Rebus: Also known as phonetic loan, these characters borrow their pronunciations from other characters.
令,少,永,自,歌