Obviously my first language is English, so I’m most used to phonetic systems. I’m struggling, though, to wrap my mind around pictographic systems, such as ones like Chinese. Every symbol is largely unique and doesn’t directly correspond to a pronunciation the way they do in alphabets. Homophones in Chinese can have entirely different characters. What aspect of that character expresses what sound and meaning is intended when speaking it aloud? Is there any system to learning it beyond straight up memorization?