In China, Kanji characters can be sorted into 6 categories (六書(リクショ)). They are: 象形, 指事, 会意, 形声, 転注, 仮借. Apart from these 6, there is another category called 国字 in Japan, which is a category for characters created in Japan.
Today, I am going to explain these 7 categories.
- 象形(ショウケイ): a pictograph – character is based on a picture
- 指事(シジ): a logogram – by using lines and/or dots to represent an abstract idea
- 会意(カイイ): a compound ideograph – by combining two or more kanji to form a new one which combines the meaning of each
- 形声(ケイセイ): hsing shêng – these characters are comprised of a semantic and a phonetic element
- 転注(テンチュウ): a derivative character – using a Chinese character to convey a different meaning (and pronunciation)
- 仮借(カシャ): a phonetic loan character – a character using only the phonetic aspect to make another word, with no regard to its semantic aspect
- 国字(コクジ):a kanji character created in Japan
According to this website: https://blog.goo.ne.jp/ishiseiji/e/dea472b49df5b474d84effa48407364e, breakdowns of all 2136 常用漢字(ジョウヨウカンジ) characters are:
- 象形(ショウケイ)pictographs – 265 characters
- 指事(シジ)logograms – 10 characters
- 会意(カイイ)compound ideographs – 530 characters
- 形声(ケイセイ)hsing shêng – 1312 characters
- 転注(テンチュウ)derivative characters -13 characters
- 仮借(カシャ)phonetic loan characters – 0 characters
- 国字(コクジ)kanji characters created in Japan – 6 characters
So a vast majority is 形声(ケイセイ), and 形声 and 会意(カイイ) comstitute over 85% of all 常用漢字(ジョウヨウカンジ). That’s why knowing radicals helps learning kanji. I will write about radicals one of these days.
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