A Study On Pronunciation Indications Of The Sound-Elements Of Common Modern Chinese Pictophonetic Characters

This paper argues the pronunciation indications of the sound-elements of the pictophonetic characters in the modern Chinese characters (of which 3500 characters in common use).We consider there are two ways in which the sound-elements indicate the pronunciations of the pictophonetic characters. Some sound-elements can indicate the pronunciations of the pictophonetic characters directly, but some cannot when they are hard to identify or people don't know their pronunciations. The third part, the highlight of the thesis, has the pictophonetic characters whose sound-elements directly indicate considerable aspects of their pronunciations classified, arranged in order and counted. Some statistical charts are involved as a help to the points. We also make a systematic analysis of the sound-elements of the pictophonetic characters, and try to examine the matter from another angle. The reasons that account for the existence of the pronunciation differences between the sound-elements and the pictophonetic characters are roughly given in the fifth part. Base on all the analysis above, the thesis tends to put forward, modestly though, some advices on how to use the sound-elements to work out the pronunciations of the pictophonetic characters and learn them more efficiently.