Written Chinese (Continued) Phonetic loans are pictographs of concrete words borrowed to indicate abstract words of the same or similar sound. The principle here is that of the rebus, or visual pun. Thus, the pictograph for dustpan (ji) was borrowed for this, his, her, its (qi or ji). Through the Chou period (11th-3d century BC) many characters had such a dual use. If at that time the scribes had agreed that only the "dustpan" pictograph would stand for any syllable pronounced ji, they would have discovered the principle of the phonetic syllabary, precursor of the alphabet . Because of the great number of homonyms in Chinese, however, scribes instead retreated to picture writing.

The picture of the dustpan came to be used exclusively for his, her, its. In the rarer instances when scribes actually meant to refer to a dustpan, however, they avoided ambiguity by employing a compound symbol in which "dustpan" had added to it the pictograph for "bamboo," representing the material from which dustpans were made. This process for reducing the ambiguity of phonetic loans became in time a process by which any pictograph, borrowed for its sound, could be joined to any other chosen to indicate the meaning, forming a phonetic compound. Thus, "dustpan," with the addition of "earth" instead of "bamboo," indicated ji, "base, foundation." Today simple and compound pictographs continue to be used for some of the most basic vocabulary home, mother, child, rice, and fire. However, perhaps 95 percent of the words in the dictionary are written with phonetic compounds.

To express modern concepts, Chinese generally invents equivalents from its native stock of meaningful syllables, or renders such terms in phonetic spelling; thus, chemistry is expressed in Chinese as "study of transformations."