Chinese characters – a beginner’s perspective.

There are many things that can lead a person to discovery, but the road there always begins in the same place; the unknown. If the distance between these places was a thousand kilometres, then I have moved only the diameter of one Jiao [As an English reader, I don't understand what you are talking about :( ] on my path to discover Chinese culture and the ancient traditions that have influenced it.

I have learned that there are riches in traditional Chinese language that have been passed down through millennia in the form of logogrammatic characters, and that these characters fall into several sub-categories of which the most commonly used is the phono-semantic compound. A couple of days ago I was introduced to another of these sub-catergories; the pictogram, and last night I began my discovery of compound ideograms, both of I which I will briefly explore with you now.

The first characters I will use to explain my early understandings are as follows;

宀, meaning rock
女, meaning female
子, meaning child

and these are the second;

安, meaning safe      [And you learn the traditions, cultures and history of the language; a very sexist language!  The original meaning is "peace", peace for the man with the woman doing all the domestic chores.]
家, meaning home    [A pig under the roof! Shows how insignificant a woman's station is until she had produced sons]
好, meaning good     [A woman having male heirs, definitely a good thing for her, as her status is now elevated]

I understand that interpretations vary on the history and development of these characters, but if I look at their meaning and observe them carefully through my visual senses, I begin to recognise something, and I feel like another tiny door has opened on my path to discovery.

Can you see what I see?

[This was how I learnt my Chinese.  I'm glad that you too found this key.  The first thing in unlocking this script is to know the meaning of the most common radicals.  Thanks for sharing and reminding me.]