3 ms·
I'm not certain about some of these. Change (化) is a combograph? Its meaning derives from an upside-down person and right-side-up person, as is (仲) relationsh
by dnautics 6y ago
I'm not certain about some of these. Change (化) is a combograph? Its meaning derives from an upside-down person and right-side-up person, as is (仲) relationship. 母 is a pictograph, although rotated 90 degrees.
- dwohnitmok 6y agoYeah I'd also class 足 as a pictograph. It is a category error to put something like 足 (foot) or 母 (mother) as a 指事字 (what the article calls an indicator). 指事字 are abstract things, like "up" (上), rather than concrete nouns.
- 4cao 6y agoAbsolutely. 足 is an augmentation of 止, which itself originated as a drawing of a foot. 母 is a picture of female breasts. Both are pictograms.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 4cao 6y agoI'd classify 化 as a simple ideogram (part of group 2, called "indicators" in the article) because it conveys the abstract idea of 'change' by showing one person upside down from the other. It isn't a compound ("combograph", group 3) to me because it doesn't build upon the meaning of its individual components. However, this is a fuzzy categorization. In the top-level comment I wrote, I listed 三 'three' as an example of an ideogram but it could be argued instead that it is a compound of three separate 一 'one' characters. Then there's the character 廿 'twenty', which consists of two 十 'ten' characters, that is probably better explained as a compound. So at a certain point it all becomes quite subjective.