Chinese and Sumerian

24 THE CHINESE CLASSIFICATION OF CHARACTERS

It is evident that Sumerian texts ‘phonetically written’, z.e. texts in which compound syllables and words are spelled out, to a greater or less extent, by using the simple symbols as mere syllabic signs, without reference to their individual meaning, are a larger application of this ‘borrowing’ principle. In <]-JEl]=¢ E]]7

Ee

me 7-7 Fee for UMUN MU-TANA.NI, every single character is used as a mere

mu—tan—na. ni index of sound, without reference to its original meaning as an independent Sumerian

word; and the same, of course, is even more true of ‘ phonetically written’ Assyrian, where the simple Sumerian signs are used to express the syllabic sounds of another language.

From the age of Confucius (sixth century B. c.) downwards, it became more and more the rule of Chinese writing to transform A7a-ts7é characters into zaz-shing by the addition of determining Radicals.