The shell bone script of character Negotiate is
The top is top part of character Say (Post 158)
which means tongue, the organ for speaking.
The bottom is character Cave (Post 44), the residence of human in the ancient time.
The cave could be a place for people gathering to negotiate important things, what was the most important thing in more than 3500+ years ago: foods. People didn't have enough foods most of the time, they shared the foods to survive. Therefore, they negotiated how to divide the foods they got either from planting or hunting or collecting. Most of time, it is distributed equally, that means total foods (weight) divided by number of people, the quotient is the result of the operation. The original meaning of the character was Quotient, and it still is the formal term in math.
The character also means that people use their tongue to negotiate or discuss how to distribute the foods or substances.
It is interesting that the Quotient (character Negotiate) has shell bone script, but Sum, Difference, Product have no shell bone script, which means that the division was most popular calculation in shell bone script time (Shang Dynasty, 3500 years ago), the addition, subtraction, multiplication were not popular at that time because the distribution of the foods among people was the most popular and important action in that time.
Why did the ancient people put the tongue outside of cave? They might have wanted to emphasize the situation: many people or all people did use tongue (to speak) and very loud, the sounds could be heard outside the cave, or it is public and transparent. If put the tongue inside, it may be thought a secret agreement.
The character means Trade or Business too. Trade or Business is also negotiating between people in a room.
The bronze script of character Negotiate is
The top is tongue, not very like the tongue maybe due to the poor casting technology at that time, causing the shape of the character distorted. The bottom is the cave, and the mouth (口）inside the cave, which may mean that there are many mouths in the cave speak to discuss how to distribute, or trade.
Small seal script of character Negotiate is
he top part is a tongue, and the bottom consists of a 'cave' (穴) plus a 'mouth' (口), which is similar to the bronze script. There is an extra horizontal stroke above the 'tongue' that isn't connected to it. What does that mean? It is an indicative mark, representing the sound emitted by the tongue. We can see a similar method of expression in the character for 'sound' (音, Post 159).
The small seal script of character Sound
The top is identical to the upper portion of character Negotiate; it also uses a short horizontal line, positioned slightly apart from the tongue, to signify the sound being emitted. The bottom part is character Say (曰, Post 341), which refers to a sound accompanied by lyrics—meaningful speech, as opposed to a sound without meaning.
The clerical script of character Negotiate is
Similar to small seal script with one line becomes a dot: the big U shape line in small seal script disappeared in clerical script.
The song typeface of character Negotiate is
Similar to clerical script.
Pinyin of character Negotiate is Shang1.
