Horses and cattle were very important domestic animals in the past. We have already learned characters with horse 马. How can we miss out characters with cattle 牛? Characters with 牛 certainly relate to cattle.
Characters with horse 马
Look how a horse 马 combines with other characters without change their pronunciations to form new characters. Of course the newly-formed characters’ meanings are all horse-related.
Where is the sheep 羊?
Sheep are docile animals; they were offered by the ancient people to God; they were eaten; etc. In a word, sheep played a very important role. Needlessly to say there are quite a few characters composed of 羊. How is 羊 sheep written in Chinese characters? You can see from the picture 羊 sheep can be written in various ways. All the meanings of the characters here are their original meanings.
Wherever a bird 鸟 is, it is still a bird.
When you see characters composed of 鸟 niǎo, don’t think too much; they are just names of different birds or something related to a bird. Their pronunciations are the same as or similar to the pronunciations of the counterparts of 鸟, e.g. 武 wǔ + 鸟 ＝ 鹉 wǔ, 九 jiǔ + 鸟 ＝ 鸠 jiū.
Radical 月 moon: “月” is on the left or right?
When “月” appears on the right side of a character, it has to do with “time, weather, etc”
