Chinese Calligraphy History (4) How could people to express abstract meanings: The Ideogram characters

The Ideogram characters

I was asked that Chinese characters are pictography, characters are pictures from the physical shapes, how could people express the abstract meanings, like verbs, adjectives, adverbs which don't have physical shape?

It is very good question.

Original, Chinese created the pictography characters, all from picture of physical shape of objects. But people need to express verb, adjective, adverb, etc. How did they do?

After ancient Chinese had enough pictography characters, they used them to create new characters.

E.g.

is Door (shell bone script)

is Mouth (shell bone script)

is Ask (shell bone script). Somebody comes to your door, and open his mouth, what is he doing? Ask.

E.g.2

is Sun of shell bone script

is Moon of shell bone script 

is Bright of shell bone script

Sun is bright, Moon is bright. Put them together, it will be bright. 

E.g. 3

is Fish of small seal script

is Goat of small seal script

is Delicious of small seal script. Cook fish and goat meat together, you get delicious food.

Let's see another example

The top is Hand (small seal script), the middle is Eye (small seal script), the bottom is See (small seal script). Put your hand over your eye, you are seeing, or watching something with a distance.

There are much much more.

Two or more pictography characters could form a new character,  which could be a verb, adjective, or adverb, without physical shape. These kind characters are called ideogram characters.

Ancient Chinese created new ideogram characters from pictography characters to express the abstract meanings.

The pictography characters are independent, but the ideogram characters are formed characters from pictography characters. Even though there are more than 100,000 Chinese characters, but only 400+ independent characters. If you know the 400+ independent, you could understand the rest very easily.

If we independent characters first, then formed characters, it would be much easier for people to learn Chinese characters.

Note: Update information

1, Amazing Chinese Characters blog has changed name to Learn Chinese with Pictography, and changed its URL address too, the new URL is

Learn Chinese with Pictography.blogspot.com/

2, Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy blog has changed name to Chinese Pictographic Calligraphy, and the new URL is

Chinese Pictographic Calligraphy.blogspot.com/

You are welcome to access the new sites for Chinese learning. Please update your bookmarks.