ABSTRACT
Actually, the character Ṣ was originally a representaƟon of the image of a person and is used to represent the word “person” or the idea of a “person”. Because of the origin of Chinese characters, people someƟmes mistakenly refer to the Chinese wriƟng system as ideographic or logographic, meaning that Chinese characters represent ideas or words but not sounds. Although we will not discuss the history and nature of Chinese wriƟng unƟl Chapter 11, we have to say upfront here that Chinese characters are not silent liƩle pictures that represent actual objects, and the Chinese wriƟng system is not exactly ideographic. DeFrancis (1984) argued quite convincingly against what he terms the “Ideographic Myth” of Chinese characters. We will see in Chapter 11 that although he is right to a large extent, there is actually more to the story than he thought because in some ways the Chinese wriƟng system is indeed ideographic. Therefore it is probably not too controversial to say that the nature of the Chinese wriƟng system is a highly controversial issue and there is no general consensus on it.
