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114
THE ALPHABET
(5) Chia chieh, "borrow-help" (Fig. 59, 3), that is characters borrowed, for words hitherto unwritten, which resemble in sound but not in sense. "Accidental and intentional interchange of characters representing homophones" (Yetts). Also "false borrowing" and arbitrary symbols as well as "misused" characters, that is, "borrowed because of close resemblance in aspect, despite unlikeness either in sense or sound" (Yetts).
On the whole, certain homonyms, that is, words having the same sound but a different meaning, or conventional symbols or local homonyms, or even erroneous characters once adopted for words for which there were no other signs, continued to be employed as regular Chinese characters; for instance, one of the symbols for "scorpion," wan, has been borrowed
心hsin
I kung
"worker"
yu
"from"
甫 fou
"rable land, huge"
果ò
"fruit"
"heart"
I k'ung
"impatience"
由 yea
"sad"
恵 fou
"to have fear"
惈的
"to go"
*shiu
"water"
I kiang
"torrent, Blood"
油 yet
"oil"
ili pu
"branch of
a river"
k'o
"river"
言
gen
I hung
quarrel"
謎 chou
"to pray
fu
"to talk to
gether, to decide"
'6
to examine to investigate
Fig. 60-Hsing sheng symbols
for wan, "10,000"; tsu, "foot" is used to express tsu, "to be sufficient"; ko, "to sing" indicates also "elder brother," the latter being pronounced ko in popular speech only; the character shih, "arrow," represents also shih, "dung"; the symbol for ti or f'i, "a stalk bearing a flower or fruit." in early times represented also the word ti, "emperor": later an extra stroke was added on the top, indicating that the ti in question was the one "above the heads of men," that is the "sovereign ruler" (Fig. 53.5). This class includes also names of certain animals and plants.
(6) Hsing sheng, meaning "formulate" or "harmonize sound," generally known as phonetic compounds (Fig. 60), number 7,697 in the Shuo wen and constitute the most important class; nowadays, it comprises ninetenths of the Chinese characters. It is this class-the cuneiform and the Egyptian writings presenting similar but not identical devices-which made it possible to increase, even to excess, the number of Chinese symbols, and at the same time to eliminate the obvious ambiguities.
