Stage Linguistique wrote:

>
> > A Hànzì, although analysable,
> > cannot be broken down into stand-alone units (your
> > 'blocks'),
>
> [Marco] (Never talked about "blocks". Perhaps you mean
> "components".)
>
> In an earlier post, you said Hànzì character-like
> elements could be broken down into *smaller*
> components (or whatever term you used). Well, those
> ultimate, smaller components have no phonetical value.
> That's what I meant; and that's the difference with
> Egyptian.

The reason the components are called the "radical" (or "semantic") and
the "phonetic" is that the phonetic offers phonetic information. To be
sure, it was more useful 2000 years ago, but it's still at least
indicative.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...