[truthexposer]

You're speaking out of your behind. Of course the signs are arbitrary with respect to their signifiers, that's any language, but there are still mappings between signs and their signifiers. English is no difference, am I supposed to know what a 'm' sounds like by looking at it? Look up the Rebus principle, it happens in every language.

And with respect to the phonetic shifts, from a linguistic perspective, most changes of the phonetic radical involve one change of the initial sound, i.e. bilabial to interdental, dental to alveolar, voiced to unvoiced. With respect to the phonetic inventory of the language, these shifts are only one feature shifts within an old SPE framework. These small featural differences, whether conscious or not, (usually unconscious because we acquire languages during our infancy) are picked up and used by the speaker of the language to categorize words.

[grzm]

You're speaking out of your behind.

Your detailed and substantive comment works just as well without this uncivil lead-in.

[truthexposer]

it's a much easier way to say, I significantly doubt your credentials as a person educated in both Mandarin Chinese and linguistics

[grzm]

HN strongly values substantive and civil discourse. If that requires a little more work on your part, please engage in it to help make HN a productive forum where discussions like this can take place. (That said, I don't see it necessary for the longer version either.)

[faitswulff]

I agree. I can only recognize on the order of 1,000 characters or so, but it is still obviously not a myth that characters have semantic and phonetic components. I have no idea what the grandparent commenter is talking about.