Though there were many phonograms, they were not like phonetic script that could have direct indication of accurate phonetic notation through the signs of the characters themselves. Therefore, in order to better impart and learn Chinese characters, people have created many methods to notate Chinese characters since ancient times.

These methods fall into two major category:

One is to use another character to show the pronunciation of one character. For example, the character (ruin, or dummy) has the same pronunciation of "lei" with the word (thunder).

The other is by combining one part indicating meaning and the other indicating sound. For instance, (ba), the Chinese character for "papa", is formed by the element (ba) which represents the sound and the element (fu) which represents the meaning (father). Likewise the character (ba) is formed by (the sound) and (grass), indicating a plant.