The problem would be way way smaller if the language were more phoenetic. I've gotten into arguments with Chinese language speakers, and they insist that the language has phoetic elements, with certain ideograms giving clues on how to pronounce words.
That's all well and good, but phoentic implies the other way around too. After hearing a word, you'll have to be able to write it. For instance, "kill", "sand", and the "shark" word in the phrase "shark" all have exactly the same tonal pronunciation, but with completely different ways of writing it.
And don't get me started on traditional vs. simplified.
In this case parent is referring to the phoneme [shā] which map to the characters 殺，沙，and 鯊. (using traditional) and mean "kill", "sand", and "shark" respectively.
Note that the last one, 鯊 is composed of two components 沙 and 魚.
So the top component is the phonetic hint and the bottom is semantic, as 魚 means "fish". Many characters for types of "fish" (I use "fish" loosely as things like whales 鯨魚 are considered fish) use the fish radical, as the characters are called when used as a component of a character.
鯉魚 carp the 里 is phonetic
鮑魚 abalone 包 is phonetic
Of course, this is just a small sampling and there are plenty of things that are inconsistent. I typically just use it as a mnemonic.
And to the point of tones, I leave 傻 [sha3], which means stupid.
Thanks for your input. I think my main point is that a phonetic language goes both ways.
Without any context, or meaning, you should be able to write a word just by hearing it. Similarly, without any context or meaning, by seeing a word, you should be able to pronounce it.
Now, of course it's a sliding scale.
But I think Chinese is on one end of the scale, where if you're just given the phenome shā without context or meaning, it's literally impossible to figure out how to write the word.
In English and all romance languages, you can try to spell it somewhat, and then give it to a native reader to see what it means. This helps a lot when you're reading subtitles for television programs or listening to the radio. If you're reading subtitles, you can sorta figure out what matches up to what. If you're listening to the radio, you can make a best guess on how to spell a word and ask somebody what it means.
That's all well and good, but phoentic implies the other way around too. After hearing a word, you'll have to be able to write it. For instance, "kill", "sand", and the "shark" word in the phrase "shark" all have exactly the same tonal pronunciation, but with completely different ways of writing it.
And don't get me started on traditional vs. simplified.