Ideogram

For chromosome ideograms, see Cytogenetics.

An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek ἰδέα idea "idea" + γράφω grafo "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept. 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.

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 formal languages (mathematical notation, logic, UML), which are used worldwide regardless of how they are pronounced in different languages. Other examples include the Blissymbols, Nsibidi, used by the Igbo and Ekpe in West Africa, Emoticons, and pictographs as used by the Sioux and Ojibwa.

Terminology

Further information: Character (word) and Logogram

The term "ideogram" is commonly used to describe logographs in writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian cuneiform and Chinese characters. All these are correct, as they are all ideograms. Dongba script used without Geba decorating is an example of a real ideogram (it is also a pictogram).

In the history of writing symbols proceeded from ideographic (such as an icon of a bull's head in a list inventory, denoting that the following numeral refers to head of cattle) to logographic (an icon of a bull denoting the Semitic word ʾālep "ox"), to phonetic (the bull's head used as a symbol in rebus writing, indicating the glottal stop at the beginning of the word for "ox", namely, the letter aleph).

Bronze Age writing systems used a combination of these applications, and many signs in hieroglyphic as well as in cuneiform writing could be used either logographically or phonetically.

For example, the Akkadian sign AN (𒀭) could be an ideograph for "deity", an ideogram for the god Anum in particular, a logograph for the Akkadian stem il- "deity", a logograph for the Akkadian word šamu "sky", or a syllabogram for either the syllable an or il.

Chinese characters

Main article: Chinese character classification

Chinese characters are examples of "ideograms", and many have specific logographic qualities or functions. The character set is broadly broken into the following categories (though these are by no means the only etymological roots of the characters we see in modern Chinese script):

• Pictographic ideograms or pictograms (象形字) -- characters that adhere most to the pictorial origins of the word-form surviving from Bronze-age China, e.g. the characters for "human", "big", "mountain", "mouth" and "sun", which are easily recognisable as straightforward pictorial derivations from their Bronze-age counterparts;

• Pictographic-phonetic compound ideograms (形声字) -- the combination of pictograms or pictographic parts with the intended phonetic properties to create a new character that phonetically mimicks the intended sound of the new word, e.g. the character for "bark", which combines the pictogram "mouth" as the radical with the pictogram for "dog";

• Inferential ideograms (会意字) -- the combination of pictograms or pictographic parts to create a new character that pictorially mimicks the intended meaning of the new word, e.g. the character for "love", which combines the pictograms for "heart" as the radical with the pictogram for "receive"; the character for "sharp", which combines the pictogram "small" at the top with the pictogram for "big" at the bottom; or the character for "room", which combines the pictogram for "household" overarching the pictogram for "square";

• Referential ideograms (指事字) -- characters that are developed with specific reference to particular entities or events in the "outside" world, whose meanings could not be simply and straightforwardly traced pictorially, phonetically, or inferentially through the internal meaning structure of the ideogram itself, e.g. the character for "clock", which combines the pictogram for "gold" (or "metal") with the pictogram for "children";

• Associative-transformative ideograms (转注字) -- characters that are developed through the association, twisting, or wholesale transformation of the original referent meanings of the constituent ideograms, so that an extra layer of meaning is created over and above its constituent parts;

• Phonetic loan ideograms (假借字) -- where a pictographically simple ideogram is "borrowed" to represent a pictographically complex ideogram which has the same or similar sounds to the pictographically simpler one, resulting in the same simple ideogram representing two or more different words, even though the similar-sounding words often have very different meanings.

The last of the above often forms the basis for the simplification of many traditional Chinese characters by the government of the People's Republic of China. Such simplification has sometimes led to confusion if the character is not understood in the context of the sentence or paragraph as a whole, for it poses difficulty to the reader to know which particular word was referred to by the use of the one simple ideogram.

The different script systems resulting from the preservation or simplication of original pre-Republic Chinese characters are used by Chinese people living under different jurisdictions: "Simplified Chinese" in Mainland China (the People's Republic of China), "Traditional Chinese" in the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau, and "Proper Chinese" (which is the same script as "Traditional Chinese") in Taiwan (the Republic of China).

Others terms used to identify Chinese characters include Sinogram, emphasizing the Chinese origin of the characters, and Han character, a literal translation of the native term. These terms have gained some currency among scholars, but have failed to spread into common usage. The native terms (Chinese hanzi, Japanese kanji, Korean hanja) are also fairly widespread in the contexts of the individual languages, but they are not generally considered suitable for discussion of the script as a whole.

See also

• Asemic writing
• Energy Systems Language
• Icon (computing)
• iConji (an example of an ideographic language)
• Lexigram
• Logotype
• Sona language
• Traffic sign
• Isotype (pictograms)
• Linear B, which had an ideographic component

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
• Encyclopædia Britannica online entry
• The Ideographic Myth Extract from DeFrancis' book.
• Merriam-Webster OnLine definition
• Ojibwa and Sioux pictographs
• A website explaining the ideographic origins of Chinese
• Pictopen: A Modern Pictographic Writing System