For instance, in Mandarin
For instance, in Mandarin there are four tones. Cantonese has six tones.
In addition, words with the same tones often have different meanings. And their meanings can only be made clear by the context of the sentence. This unique feature of the Chinese language gives rise to ?visual puns?.
The interplay of phonetics (i.e. sounds) and puns often reveal the hidden meanings of Chinese symbols or characters. Phonetics and puns give clues to the hidden meaning of images. Hence a picture of a fish is an expression of ?abundance? because the Chinese word for “fish” yu2 has the same sound as “abundance” yu2 This is an example of a ?visual pun? and there are lots of them in the Chinese language.
It?s easy to see why there is no such thing as a ?full Chinese alphabet? or ?Chinese alphabet letters?. Or why the Chinese alphabet is ?missing?. An alphabet consists of a small number of letters (e.g. 26 in English) which make up all the words in the spoken language.
There are no letters in Chinese writing. Only thousands of individual symbols or characters each with their specific sound(s) and meanings.
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