Written Chinese is not possible to phoneticize, because the mapping of characters to sounds (including the tone) is many-to-one. The poem of shi was written to

Written Chinese is not possible to phoneticize, because the mapping of characters to sounds (including the tone) is many-to-one. The poem of shi was written to demonstrate this point [1]. The oral language could obviously be phoneticized, since you can't see the characters when someone talks. But I think native speakers think in terms of characters, not syllables. So you get puns based off of sound and meaning, and written Chinese takes advantage of the fact that characters uniquely describe a meaning, most notably in names. When native speakers discuss names (people, places, etc.) they often ask which character it is. In fact, it is apparently such a common question that foreigners learn the phrase pretty early on. Language isn't just about productivity. The characters have a lot of character. In fact, you can communicate a lot simply with the choice of character, since there is a long history and connotation. [1] http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/SHISHI.RXML http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/SHISHI.RXML