Chinese Symbols - Pictures or Letters?
"The earliest symbols in the development of Chinese writing were pictographic, that is they graphically depicted certain objects. The symbol for the word "dog" was a picture of a dog, the symbol for the word "tiger" was a picture of a tiger, etc. It is important to emphasize, however, that despite their graphic resemblance, these symbols were secondary to the sound value of words in spoken language. Later on, additional symbols were developed mainly on the basis of phonetic similarities between words."
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