转注和假借
Zhuǎnzhù and jiǎjiè

你天天说「我来了」。这三个字里，我 和 来 都不是本来的意思：我 本来画的是一件兵器，来 本来画的是一棵麦子。口语里早就有 wǒ 和 lái 这两个词，可是没有字，古人就借了两个同音的字来写。借得太久，本义反而没人记得了。

Your very first sentences used 我 and 来. Neither character was invented for the word it now writes: 我 was a weapon and 来 was a stalk of wheat. The spoken words wǒ and lái existed with no graph of their own, so a same-sounding character was borrowed for each. The loan held so well that the original senses had to move out.

这就是为什么前四课你能一个一个地画出来，这一课画不出来。前四种回答的是「这个字是怎么来的」，后两种回答的是「这个字后来被怎么用了」。所以六书不是六个整整齐齐的抽屉，是许慎为了说明汉字定下的六个名目。

That is why the last four lessons could be drawn and this one cannot. The first four answer 'where did this graph come from'; the last two answer 'what was later done with it'. The six categories are not six tidy drawers — they are the six headings Xu Shen needed in order to talk about the writing system at all.

被借走的字往往回不来了。来 让给了「来去」，麦子只好另写一个 麦；我 让给了代词，那件兵器今天谁也不写了。要借的多半是虚词——代词、介词、语气词。这些词天天用，可是画不出来。

A borrowed character rarely gets handed back. 来 went to 'come' and wheat had to be rewritten as 麦; 我 went to the pronoun and nobody writes the weapon any more. Notice which words do the borrowing: pronouns, prepositions, sentence-final particles — the words you use in every sentence and can draw in none.

老实说，转注是六书里说法最不一致的一种：许慎只留下八个字，两千年来学者的解释各不相同。这一课不要求你会分辨转注字，只要求你记住 考、老 这一对例子，和一句话——转注说的是两个字的关系，不是一个字的造法。

Be honest about this one: 转注 is the disputed member of the six. Xu Shen left eight characters of definition, and no reading of them has ever won general agreement. You are not asked to identify 转注 characters — only to hold on to the 考/老 pair and to one sentence: 转注 describes a relation between two characters, not the making of one.