An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek "idea" and "to write") is a

graphic Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture, ...

symbol A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...

that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiarity with prior convention; others convey their meaning through pictorial resemblance to a physical object, and thus may also be referred to as '' pictograms''. The numerals and mathematical symbols are ideograms – 1 'one', 2 'two', + 'plus', = 'equals', and so on (compare the section "Mathematics" below). In English, the

ampersand The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram , representing the conjunction "and". It originated as a ligature of the letters ''et''—Latin for "and". Etymology Traditionally in English, when spelling aloud, any letter that ...

& is used for 'and' and (as in many languages) for Latin ' (as in &c for '), % for '

percent In mathematics, a percentage (from la, per centum, "by a hundred") is a number or ratio expressed as a fraction of 100. It is often denoted using the percent sign, "%", although the abbreviations "pct.", "pct" and sometimes "pc" are also use ...

' ('per cent'), # for 'number' (or 'pound', among other meanings), § for 'section', $ for 'dollar', € for 'euro', £ for 'pound', ° for 'degree', @ for 'at', and so on. The reason they are ideograms rather than logograms is that they do not denote fixed morphemes: they can be read in many different languages, not just English. There is not always only a single way to read them and they are in some cases read as a complex phrase rather than a single word.

Terminology

In proto-writing, used for inventories and the like, physical objects are represented by stylized or conventionalized pictures, or pictograms. For example, the pictorial Dongba symbols without Geba annotation cannot represent the

Naxi language Naxi (Naqxi ), also known as ''Nakhi, Nasi, Lomi, Moso, Mo-su'', is a Sino-Tibetan language or group of languages spoken by some 310,000 people, most of whom live in or around Lijiang City Yulong Naxi Autonomous County of the province of Yunnan, ...

, but are used as a mnemonic for reciting oral literature. Some systems also use ideograms, symbols denoting abstract concepts. The term "ideogram" is often used to describe symbols of writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian cuneiform and Chinese characters. However, these symbols represent elements of a particular language, mostly words or morphemes (so that they are logograms), rather than objects or concepts. In these writing systems, a variety of strategies were employed in the design of logographic symbols. Pictographic symbols depict the object referred to by the word, such as an icon of a bull denoting the Semitic word ''ʾālep'' "ox". Some words denoting abstract concepts may be represented iconically, but most other words are represented using the rebus principle, borrowing a symbol for a similarly-sounding word. Later systems used selected symbols to represent the sounds of the language, for example the adaptation of the logogram for ''ʾālep'' "ox" as the letter

aleph Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez . These letter ...

representing the initial sound of the word, a

glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...

. Many signs in hieroglyphic as well as in

cuneiform writing Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sha ...

could be used either logographically or phonetically. For example, the Sumerian sign DIĜIR () could represent the word ''diĝir'' 'deity', the god An or the word ''an'' 'sky'. The Akkadian counterpart Assyrian cuneiform U1202D MesZL 10

could represent the Akkadian stem '' il-'' 'deity', the Akkadian word ''šamu'' 'sky', or the syllable ''an''. Although Chinese characters are logograms, two of the smaller classes in the traditional classification are ideographic in origin: * Simple ideographs (指事字 ''zhǐshìzì'') are abstract symbols such as 上 ''shàng'' "up" and 下 ''xià'' "down" or numerals such as 三 ''sān'' "three". * Semantic compounds (会意字 ''huìyìzì'') are semantic combinations of characters, such as 明 ''míng'' "bright", composed of 日 ''rì'' "sun" and 月 ''yuè'' "moon", or 休 ''xiū'' "rest", composed of 人 ''rén'' "person" and 木 ''mù'' "tree". In the light of the modern understanding of

Old Chinese phonology Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the phonology of Old Chinese from documentary evidence. Although the writing system does not describe sounds directly, shared phono-semantic, phonetic components of the most ancient Chinese characters are b ...

, researchers now believe that most of the characters originally classified as semantic compounds have an at least partially phonetic nature. An example of ideograms is the collection of 50 signs developed in the 1970s by the

American Institute of Graphic Arts The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) is a professional organization for design. Its members practice all forms of communication design, including graphic design, typography, interaction design, user experience, branding and identity. T ...

at the request of the US Department of Transportation. The system was initially used to mark airports and gradually became more widespread.

Mathematics

Mathematical symbols are a type of ideogram.

Proposed universal languages

Inspired by inaccurate early descriptions of

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

and Japanese

character Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...

s as ideograms, many Western thinkers have sought to design universal written languages, in which symbols denote concepts rather than words. An early proposal was '' An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language'' (1668) by

John Wilkins John Wilkins, (14 February 1614 – 19 November 1672) was an Anglican clergyman, natural philosopher, and author, and was one of the founders of the Royal Society. He was Bishop of Chester from 1668 until his death. Wilkins is one of the fe ...

. A recent example is the system of

Blissymbols Blissymbols or Blissymbolics is a constructed language conceived as an ideographic writing system called Semantography consisting of several hundred basic symbols, each representing a concept, which can be composed together to generate new sym ...

, which was devised by

Charles K. Bliss Charles K. Bliss (September 5, 1897 – July 13, 1985) was a chemical engineer and semiotician, best known as the inventor of Blissymbols, an ideographic writing system. He was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire but immigrated to Austra ...

in 1949 and currently includes over 2,000 symbols.Unger (2003), pp. 13–16.

References

*DeFrancis, John. 1990. ''The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy''. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. *Hannas, William. C. 1997. ''Asia's Orthographic Dilemma''. University of Hawaii Press. (paperback); (hardcover) *Unger, J. Marshall. 2003. ''Ideogram: Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning''. (trade paperback), (hardcover)

External links

The Ideographic Myth
Extract from DeFrancis' book.
Merriam-Webster OnLine definition
{{Authority control Communication design Graphic design Pictograms Writing systems

Terminology

Mathematics

Proposed universal languages

See also

References

External links