How to write Chinese characters - 然 (do something in a certain way)

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然 ran2 'to do something in a certain way, adverbial suffix'

The original meaning of this character was 'to roast meat'. The reason why its today's meaning is so abstract is that the Ancient Chinese pronunciations of these two words (to roast and 'to do something in a certain way') were very similar and since there was no character for the latter, 然 was chosen to represent it. To differentiate the old meaning 'to roast' 火 huo3 'fire' was added to the old character to form 燃 which is how 'to roast' is written today.

When 然 was created, it was a phono-semantic compound consisting of 火 huo3 'fire' at the bottom (arbitrarily written as 灬 when at the bottom of characters) which is the semantic element of the character (element pointing to its meaning) and 肰 ran2 'dog meat' which is the phonetic and co-semantic element in the character (An element pointing to the sound and meaning of the character. The left part 肉 rou4 'meat' arbitrarily contracted to 月 when on the left side of characters. Also notice that 月 has been arbitrarily contracted again in 然).

Ancient Chinese pronunciation: ńźi̯än
Cantonese pronunciation: in
Japanese pronunciation: zen, nen
Taiwanese (Southern Min): jiân

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