Not every character's origins and rules applied are specifically taught during the learning process. Also IIRC I began learning decent "Liu Shu" (6 Principles of characters) when I was in junior high school, quite far from elementary school where my basic vocabulary was established.Stas Bush wrote:However, knowledge of written Chinese requires knowing pictogram origins and rules of composition, otherwise it's hard to imagine people memorizing even the basic level of Chinese literacy (2000 hieros).
Easy ones like the "boat" character can be refuted by other characters such as "along"沿 or the metal "lead" 鉛. But there are characters that can't be easily understood by the 6 principles due to the fact that they were categorized on the older style. This is where shit like "righteous = Jesus baptises you with his blood" comes in.