Amazing Chinese Characters (341) Say - 曰

 The shell bone script of character Say is

The bottom is Mouth, the top is an indicator, means the sound or voice from the mouth. It is indicative character, in which the indictor is emphasized. Here is the sound of word from the mouth emphasized by the short horizontal line.

The bronze script of the character is

 which is a mouth, the top is half opened, means that the sound or voice goes out through there.

The small seal script of the character is

A mouth in the bottom and half opened tunnel on the top, the sound comes out through it. 

The clerical script of the character is

The top is closed, no tunnel out, which is not only away from the original pictography, but also making it too close to the character 日 - Sun.

The difference is 日 - Sun is narrower and the middle line is touching both sides. The middle line in character Say is only touching left side. But in the handwriting many people make the difference too small to tell which he means.

The song typeface of the character is

曰

Its Pinyin is Yue1.

曰 - Say is an old writing character, which means, people don't use it in oral speech. Even in writing, people don't use it right now, we only see it in the classical articles. However, we can see it in many compound characters as part of the character with the meaning of Say. 

There is another character Say - 言 （Post 158), which is also a writing character. However, it is still used in modern Chinese.