The invention of determinative signs--characters put beside the word to show what class of objects a word belongs to--helps the Chinese to overcome some of the difficulties which their radical language offers to the introduction of sound-writing. For example, the word ‘Pa’ has eight different meanings, and when it is written phonetically, a reader would have to choose between eight objects to which he might apply it, if there were not a determinative sign by its side which gives him a hint how to read it. This is as if when we wrote the word ‘vessel’ we were to add ‘navigation’ when we intended a ship; and ‘household’ when we meant a jug or puncheon. The Chinese determinative signs are not, however, left to each writer’s fancy. Two hundred and fourteen signs (originally themselves pictures, remember) have been chosen out, and are always used in this way. The classes into which objects are divided by these numerous signs are minute, and do not appear to follow any scientific method or arrangement. There is a sign to show that a written word belongs to the class noses, another for rats, another for frogs, another for tortoises. One is inclined to think that the helpful signs must be as hard to remember as the words themselves, and that they can only be another element in the general confusion. Probably their frequent recurrence makes them soon become familiar to Chinese readers, and they act as finger-posts to guide the thoughts into the right direction. Determinative signs have always come in to help in the transitional stage between purely ideographic and purely phonetic writing, and were used by both Egyptians and Assyrians in their elaborate systems as soon as the phonetic principle began to be employed among their ideographs. It is an interesting fact that the Japanese have dealt with the Chinese system of writing precisely as did the Phœnicians with the Egyptian hieroglyphics. They have chosen forty-seven signs from the many thousands employed by the Chinese, and they use them phonetically only; that is to say, as true sound-carrying letters. CHAPTER XIII. PHONETIC WRITING. [Sidenote: Transition to phonetic writing.]