Phono-semantic characters are made up of a semantic component and a phonetic component.
Tips
culture
About 80–90% of Chinese characters are 形声字 (phono-semantic compounds): one part hints at meaning (形符), one part hints at sound (声符). E.g., 妈 = 女 (woman, 形符) + 马 (mǎ, 声符). Once you internalize this, character learning gets dramatically faster.
memory
形 'shape/form' = the meaning side of the character. 声 'sound' = the sound side. Each is a 符 (token/symbol) that does half the work.
