Originally, 1200 BC in the Shang dynasty, Chinese characters were mainly "pictographic", using pictures to show words or ideas. Now only 1% of Chinese characters are pictographic. 97% of modern characters are SP characters. These are a pair of symbols, one for meaning (semantics) and the other for pronunciation. In many cases the P and S parts are put together into one joint character. Chinese is not one spoken language, but many, but the same writing system is used for all. This writing system has been reformed a number of times.