Chinese in practice is a rebus for a language that was spoken 3,000 years ago. There are a few hundred basic characters and most other ones have a meaning half

Chinese in practice is a rebus for a language that was spoken 3,000 years ago. There are a few hundred basic characters and most other ones have a meaning half and a phonetic half shoves together. E.g. 論 lun (discourse) = 言 speech plus sounds like 侖 lun.