case an indicator of the special sense intended to be conveyed. Thus,
taking 丁 as the phonetic base, in order to express _ting_, "a boil," the
indicator for "disease," 疒, was added, making 疔; for _ting_, "the top,"
the indicator for "head," 页, was added, making 顶; for "to command," the
symbol for "mouth," 口 was added, making 叮; for "nail," and also for
"ingot," the symbol for "metal," 金, was added, making 釘; and for "to
arrange," the symbol for "speech," 言, was added, making 訂. 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 口 _k'ou_ as the picture
of a mouth, that was taken as the phonetic base, and to express "to
rap," the symbol for "hand," 手 or 扌, was added, making 扣; while to
express "button," the symbol for "metal," 金 was added, making 釦. 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 東 _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 東 as the
phonetic base, and added to it "an icicle," 冫, thus 凍. And when they
wanted to write down _tung_ "a beam," instead of "icicle," they put the
obvious indicator 木 "wood," thus 棟.

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

There is first the phonetic base, itself a character originally intended