palefirewax

That's why I said it's partly phonetic. From the perspective of language learning I think it's extremely helpful to be able to intuit from the phonetic component that they will sound similar. I would also say that the tonal pronunciation differences are not that significant as the main distinguisher in Mandarin is the usage of compound words (2+ hanzi). Consider the fact that in China there are very few people who speak in the "proper" correct CCTV way. Most people will have large tonal variations from dialect etc. Compound words are the key to intelligibility.

Most hanzi in Mandarin are partly phonetic. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters#Phono-seman.... It's generally not based on radical, but on the so called phonetic component. See say 元, 远, 园, 院.

When I was working at Boeing, my boss who was around during those times gave this anecdote.

Apparently in return for being allowed to build the 777, the city of Everett (maybe it was Renton or the state of Washington) demanded large amounts of public works/benefits. Boeing was not pleased with this but in order to make the 777 happen they did all the stuff required. However, they vowed to never have to deal with such nonsense again. To make that happen, they moved their HQ (it was eventually decided to be Chicago) and began to consider relocating their plants to another state. Eventually, that became South Carolina. Or so the anecdote goes.

I don't think my boss was very high up back then, so I can't speak to how factual it is, but it sounds plausible.