Dictionary Definition
ideogram n : a graphic character used in
ideography [syn: ideograph]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Pronunciation
- /ˈIdiəgɹæm/, /"Idi@gr
Extensive Definition
An ideogram or ideograph (from
Greek idea
"idea" + grafo "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents
an idea, rather than a
group of letters arranged according to the phonemes of a spoken language,
as is done in alphabetic languages, or a
strictly representational picture of a subject as may be done in
illustration or
photography.
Examples of ideograms include
wayfinding signs,
such as in airports and
other environments where many people may not be familiar with the
language of the place they are in, as well as Arabic
numerals and mathematical
notation, which are used worldwide regardless of how they are
pronounced in different languages.
The term "ideogram" is
commonly used to describe logographic writing systems
such as Egyptian hieroglyphs
and Chinese
characters. However, graphemes in logographic
systems generally represent words or morphemes rather than pure
ideas.
Chinese characters
Chinese characters are conventionally called ideographs or ideograms, but as each character represents a morpheme (and is useful almost always as an entire word) rather than an idea, they are more accurately called logograms. Within the Chinese linguistic tradition, characters are divided into six categories, of which "ideograph" is a plausible translation of one. Note that this does not imply that characters in that category represent ideas; they still represent morphemes. The categories are: pictograms, ideograms, compound indicatives, phono-semantic compounds, borrowed characters, and derived characters. The first four are ways characters are composed, while the last two refer to additional methods in which they are used.- Pictograms are characters derived from pictures of the objects they originally denoted: for example, the character used to write the word meaning "moon", 月, is derived from a stylised picture of a crescent moon.
- Ideograms are unlike pictograms in that they do not picture things, but "indicate" their use — e.g. the character for "below" 下 has a stroke below the T of a perpendicular diagram while "above" 上 has an upside down T with the stroke above the perpendicular base.
- Compound indicatives are typically composed of pictograms or ideograms arranged to remind one of a more abstract word — for example, the character 明, for the word meaning "bright" seems to be composed of pictograms for sun and moon side by side (instead of sun, this is a historically simplified version of a pictogram for window, thus the compound more sensibly reminds one of the subjectively intense brightness of a spot of moonlight in a room). Though many people believe that all Chinese characters are of this type, they actually are relatively few.
- phono-semantic compounds are characters which typically are a combination of one or more units, functioning just as in the compound indicatives above, plus a single phonetic unit, a preexisting character which can suggest our word to us because of its very closely similar pronunciation, at least when our character was divised. Often, but not necessarily, one of the semantic pictograms is a classifier (called a 'radical': some common ones are "hand" and "water") useful in standard indexing schemes.
- Borrowed characters are characters used to represent morphemes unrelated to their original morphemes, based solely on having similar pronunciation.
- Derived characters are characters that have the same etymological root but have diverged, sometimes due to the morpheme itself diverging. The character 國 is a derived character, because the character 或 originally meant state, but this was forgotten due to its being borrowed for the conjunctive, "or".
The phono-semantic compounding
process seems to have been the easiest and most flexible way to
create characters. By dictionary count, the great bulk of
characters (some estimate as many as 90 percent) use the
phono-semantic principle.
Japanese and Korean
Hanja (Korean Chinese
characters) and kanji (Japanese Chinese characters) were directly
derived from Chinese characters. Hanja and kanji were (and are)
used by older generations, and continue to be learned in schools
today.
In Japan, the use of
Kanji is
widespread and shows no sign of diminishing. Japanese children are
taught just over 1,000 characters in primary and secondary school
and a few hundred more in high school. Therefore, a Japanese of
average education can comfortably read and write most Kanji used in
everyday life.
To many people, Korean
(hangul) and Japanese (hiragana, katakana) may look like ideograms
because they look like "block letters", but that is a
misconception. Hangul, hiragana, and katakana were created to make
writing and reading easier for the common people, so they are
phonetic and not ideographic. Each writing system has an alphabet
that pertains to its sound.
Middle Iranian languages
Ideograms are one of the two essential characteristics of the Pahlavi writing system. This system was used for writing several different Middle Iranian languages, including (but not limited to) Parthian (from which 'Pahlavi' gets its name) and Middle Persian (for which the Pahlavi writing system is best attested).The ideograms in these various
Middle Iranian languages are all originally Aramaic
language words, Aramaic having previously (under the Achaemenids)
been the lingua franca of trade and government. In the later Middle
Iranian however, texts were written as spoken, that is, with
Iranian language syntactical structure, rather than with Semitic
language syntax. The Aramaic words however remained: they were
eventually no longer considered alien language words, but "symbols"
representing a particular idea.
Thus the word for "king" would
not be written phonetically (as far as any consonantary could be
described to be phonetic), but as the "symbol" *Formal
languages such as mathematical
notation, logic,
UML,
computer
languages
See also
References
- DeFrancis, John. 1990. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1068-6
- Hannas, William. C. 1997. Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1892-X (paperback); ISBN 0-8248-1842-3 (hardcover)
- Unger, J. Marshall. 2003. Ideogram: Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning. ISBN 0-8248-2760-0 (trade paperback), ISBN 0-8248-2656-6 (hardcover)
External links
- AIGA Symbol Signs Common US ideograms.
- American Heritage Dictionary definition
- Encyclopedia Britannica online entry
- Hobo Signs
- The Ideographic Myth Extract from DeFrancis' book.
- Merriam-Webster OnLine definition
- Ojibwa and Sioux pictographs
ideogram in Catalan:
Ideograma
ideogram in Danish:
Ideogram
ideogram in German:
Schriftzeichen
ideogram in Estonian:
Ideogramm
ideogram in Modern Greek
(1453-): Ιδεόγραμμα
ideogram in Spanish:
Ideograma
ideogram in Esperanto:
Ideogramo
ideogram in Persian:
اندیشهنگار
ideogram in French:
Idéogramme
ideogram in Galician:
Ideograma
ideogram in Korean: 표의
문자
ideogram in Italian:
Ideogramma
ideogram in Italian:
ideogramma
ideogram in Hebrew:
אידאוגרמה
ideogram in Dutch:
Ideogram
ideogram in Japanese:
表意文字
ideogram in Norwegian:
Ideogram
ideogram in Polish: Pismo
ideograficzne
ideogram in Portuguese:
Ideograma
ideogram in Romanian:
Ideogramă
ideogram in Russian:
Идеограмма
ideogram in Slovenian:
Ideogram
ideogram in Serbo-Croatian:
Ideogram
ideogram in Finnish:
Ideogrammi
ideogram in Swedish:
Ideogram
ideogram in Chinese:
形意文字
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
allegory, alphabet, arrowhead, art, blueprint, character, charactering, characterization,
charactery, chart, choreography, cipher, conventional
representation, conventional symbol, cuneiform, dance notation,
delineation,
demonstration,
demotic character, depiction, depictment, determinative, diagram, drama, drawing, emblem, exemplification,
figuration, grammalogue, hieratic
symbol, hieroglyph,
hieroglyphic,
hieroglyphics,
hiragana, iconography, iconology, ideograph, illustration, imagery, imaging, kana, katakana, letter, limning, logogram, logograph, logotype, love knot, map, musical notation, notation, ogham, phonetic, phonetic symbol,
pictogram, pictograph, picturization, plan, portraiture, portrayal, prefigurement, presentment, printing, projection, radical, realization, rendering, rendition, representation, rune, schema, score, script, shorthand, syllabary, symbol, symbolic system, symbolism, symbolization, symbology, tablature, token, totem, totem pole, type, wedge, word letter, writing