The majority of these characters are pictographs. Archaeologists and epigraphers of various countries have learned that most early writing svstems went through a pictographic stage, as did the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Most writing systems, however, eventually developed a phonetic alphabet to represent the sounds of spoken language rather than visual images perceived in the physical world. Chinese is the only major writing system of the world that continued its pictograph-based development without interruption and that is still in general modern use. But not all Chinese characters are simply impressionistic sketches of concrete objects.
Chinese characters incorporate meaning and sound as well as visual image into a coherent whole.