= “born of a woman,” means “clan-name,” showing that the ancient Chinese traced through the mother and not through the father. Interesting and ingenious as many of these combinations are, it is clear that their number, too, must in any practical system of writing be severely limited. Hence it is not surprising that this class of characters, correctly called ideograms, as representing ideas and not objects, should be a comparatively small one. Up to this point there seemed to be but little chance of the written language reaching a free field for expansion. It had run so far on lines sharply distinct from those of ordinary speech. There was nothing in the character per se which gave the slightest clue to the sound of the word it represented. Each character, therefore, had to be learned and recognized by a separate effort of memory. Phonetic characters. The first step in a new, and, as it ultimately proved, the right direction, was the borrowing of a character already in use to represent another word identical in sound, though different in meaning. Owing to the scarcity of vocables noted above, there might be as many as ten different words in common use, each pronounced fang. Out of those ten only one, we will suppose, had a character assigned to it—namely
“square” (originally said to be a picture of two boats joined together). But among the other nine was fang, meaning “street” or “locality,” in such common use that it became necessary to have some means of writing it. Instead of inventing an altogether new character, as they might have done, the Chinese took
“square” and used it also in the sense of “locality.” This was a simple expedient, no doubt, but one that, applied on a large scale, could not but lead to confusion. The corresponding difficulty which presented itself in speech was overcome, as we saw, by many devices, one of which consisted in prefixing to the word in question another which served to determine its special meaning. A native does not say fang simply when he wishes to speak of a place, but li-fang “earth-place.” Exactly the same device was now adopted in writing the character. To fang “square” was added another part meaning “earth,” in order to show that the fang in question had to do with location on the earth’s surface. The whole character thus appeared as
. Once this phonetic principle had been introduced, all was smooth sailing, and writing progressed by leaps and bounds. Nothing was easier now than to provide signs for the other words pronounced fang. “A room” was
door-fang; “to spin” was