Meaning of phono-semantic compound | Babel Free

Definitions

A Chinese character (CJKV character) composed of a component which is related to the meaning the character and another component which is related to the sound of the character.

Equivalents

Examples

“Only an opaque and weak orthography-to-phonology analogy rule can be found with the phono-semantic compound type of characters (i.e., the xingshēng zi), which covers 80% of modern daily-use characters.”

“'Jeon' is a phono-semantic compound which is formed from two elements of different words in two parts.”

“The Chinese character 城 is a phono-semantic compound of the "place" or "earth" radical 土 and 成, whose Old Chinese pronunciation has been reconstructed as *deŋ.”

“Phono-semantic compound characters, or the combination of elements that provide meaning and sound: the rebus 干 (gan) provides the phonetic basis for combinations with determinative characters such as 木 (mu, tree),日 (ri, sun), and 月 (rou, meat), to create the characters ...”

CEFR level