> Traditional Chinese characters have strong visual relationships to one another depending on how they both sound, or whether they have similar meanings, or whe

> Traditional Chinese characters have strong visual relationships to one another depending on how they both sound, or whether they have similar meanings, or whether they were linguistically derived from the same historical source. This is not incorrect, but it's also less useful than you'd think, since Chinese writing has been around for thousands of years and both pronunciation and meaning have changed greatly in that time, so many combined characters are quite impenetrable. For example, the moon radical 月 yue plus the sun radical 昜 yang means, wait for it, 肠 chang "intestine". Now a student of Chinese will know that as a radical 月 is often (but by no means) always associated with internal organs, but all that really helps you do is avoid ordering dishes on the menu with an unfamiliar 月-something character.