Chinese was my first language, and although I can make out those relationships between parts of characters, sometimes, I think usually in my mind the mapping be

Chinese was my first language, and although I can make out those relationships between parts of characters, sometimes, I think usually in my mind the mapping between characters and their meanings is just a giant hash table. I find the relationships between each part of each character un-systematic. Perhaps subconsciously I make use of those relationships but conciously it's all 'I just know what that character means'.