Similar to Sumerian proto-cuneiform writing, the nature of Chinese writing is fundamentally ideographic, in which concepts or thoughts are represented visually rather than through abstract speech sounds. This paper explores ten ways to form Chinese characters by using the decoded characters through their ideograms. A character comes from thoughts, the thoughts come from images, and the images themselves come from the object or the event depicted. Therefore, the same character can be used in different dialects or languages to depict the same concepts. Only when there are enough ideograms to create their graphs for phonography can we develop phonography. During the first stage of hundreds of years, most Sumerian clay characters were pictograms and ideograms. The majority of the phono-semantic compounds appeared in the second stage when the foreign Akkadians used Sumerian characters. Just as the majority of Shang bone characters were pictograms and ideograms, most phono-semantic compound characters were modified and created by the foreign Zhou people later. At present, western theories have not followed the traditional path to the meaning of thought. The ten strategies of ideographic writing are the conventional path to the meaning of thought, rather than a bridge between language.

中國文字的本質是表意文字。據此商代寫作不代表講話，而是思想, 早期蘇 美爾文亦如此并持续了几百年。本文收集了許多已經破解的甲骨文字，用作例子來說 明表意文字如何直接地或聯想地表意，而無需借用表音來從語言上理解或表意。一個 字來源於其思想，來源於形象，來源於描繪的對象或事件，此乃訓詁學之形訓，《說 文》以形索意之傳統。該字可表不同語辭或口音而意義相同。首先，一個寫作體系經 過幾百年的發展，只有當有足夠的書寫表意文字可以借來作為表音符號或文字，語音 寫作才有可能。第二，在寫作發展史上，大量的借音造字寫作應用，都是由外國人開 始的在文字发展的後期或第二階段，例如阿卡德人大量使用蘇美爾字的音來組合成其 拼音字以表其語言中的字詞的音，再例周人開始大量用前人文字來造形聲字以用於其 金文。漢字的形成或孳乳方式包括一些象形文字和一些借音字，而其中絕大多數是以 復合表意文字的形式產生的在其初期。所謂音義復合字（形聲字）絕大多數應為比喻 造字（如河、星）在其初期创制时代，其制字之意為周代以後的形變音化所模糊

1. Introduction（引言）
2. Ten Writings（十書）
3. Pictographs and Symbolism (象形和象意造字)
4. Denoting Design （指事造字）
    4.1. The Indicator ‘Foot’
    4.2. The Indicator ‘Arrow’
    4.3. The Indicator ‘Mouth’
5. Analogy Design (比喻造字)
6. Narrative Design（景象造字）
7. Character Formula（字式造字）
8. Modifier-modified（偏正造字）
9. Mutual Illustration（轉注造字）
10. Shape Loan（形符假借）
11. Semantic Loan（意符假借）
12. Phonetic Loan（音符假借）
13. Form Phoneticization（形變音化）
    13.1. Adding a phonetic glyph
    13.2. Distorting the script
    13.3. Replacing a part of the script with a phonetic glyph
14. Conclusions（結語）
References

• Dalu Da WEIH(Ideography and History Institute of Toronto, Canada) | 大路大魏 (表意和歷史研究所)