The third and greatest step in the art of writing was reached when the Chinese, who had been trying to make one character do for several similar-sounding words of different meanings, suddenly bethought themselves of distinguishing these several similar-sounding words by adding to the original character employed some other character indicative of the special sense in which each was to be understood.  Thus, in speech the sound ting meant “the sting of an insect,” and was appropriately pictured by what is now written [ding].

There were, however, other words also expressed by the sound ting, such as “a boil,” “the top or tip,” “to command,” “a nail,” “an ingot,” and “to arrange.”  These would be distinguished in speech by the tones and suffixes, as already described; but in writing, if [ding] were used for all alike, confusion would of necessity arise.  To remedy this, it occurred to some one in very early ages to make [ding], and other similar pictures of things or ideas, serve as what we now call Phonetics, i.e. the part which suggests the sound of the character, and to add in each case an indicator of the special sense intended to be conveyed.  Thus, taking [ding] as the phonetic base, in order to express ting, “a boil,” the indicator for “disease,” [chuang], was added, making [ding]; for ting, “the top,” the indicator for “head,” [ye], was added, making [ding]; for “to command,” the symbol for “mouth,” [kou] was added, making [ding]; for “nail,” and also for “ingot,” the symbol for “metal,” [jin], was added, making [ding]; and for “to arrange,” the symbol for “speech,” [yan], was added, making [ding].  We thus obtain five new words, which, so far as the written language is concerned, are easily distinguishable one from another, namely, ting “a sting,” disease-ting = “a boil,” head-ting = “the top,” mouth-ting = “to command,” metal-ting = “a nail,” speech-ting = “to arrange.”  In like manner, the words for “mouth,” “to rap,” and “a button,” were all pronounced k’ou.  Having got [kou] k’ou as the picture of a mouth, that was taken as the phonetic base, and to express “to rap,” the symbol for “hand,” [shou] or [CJK:624C], was added, making [kou]; while to express “button,” the symbol for “metal,” [jin] was added, making [kou].  So that we have k’ou = “mouth,” hand-k’ou = “to rap,” and metal-k’ou = “button.”

Let us take a picture of an idea.  We have [dong] tung = the sun seen through the trees,—­“the east.”  When the early Chinese wished to write down tung “to freeze,” they simply took the already existing [dong] as the phonetic base, and added to it “an icicle,” [bing], thus [dong].  And when they wanted to write down tung “a beam,” instead of “icicle,” they put the obvious indicator [mu] “wood,” thus [dong].

We have now got the two portions into which the vast majority of Chinese characters can be easily resolved.