Ideogram
Encyclopedia
An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek
idea "idea" + 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 pictogram
s.
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
,
Emoticon
s and pictographs as used by the Sioux
and Ojibwa
.
in writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs
, Sumerian cuneiform and Chinese character
s. All these are correct, for they're all ideograms. Dongba script
used without Geba
decorating is an example of a real ideogram (it's also a pictogram).
In the history of writing
symbols proceeded from ideographic (e.g. 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", viz. 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
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.
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.
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
idea "idea" + grafo "to write") is a graphic symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
that represents an idea
Idea
In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...
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 pictogram
Pictogram
A pictograph, also called pictogram or pictogramme is an ideogram that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and graphic systems in which the characters are to considerable extent pictorial in appearance.Pictography is a...
s.
Examples of ideograms include wayfinding
Wayfinding
Wayfinding encompasses all of the ways in which people and animals orient themselves in physical space and navigate from place to place.-Historical:...
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
Mathematical notation
Mathematical notation is a system of symbolic representations of mathematical objects and ideas. Mathematical notations are used in mathematics, the physical sciences, engineering, and economics...
, logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
, UML
Unified Modeling Language
Unified Modeling Language is a standardized general-purpose modeling language in the field of object-oriented software engineering. The standard is managed, and was created, by the Object Management Group...
), which are used worldwide regardless of how they are pronounced in different languages. Other examples include the Blissymbols
Blissymbols
Blissymbols or Blissymbolics was 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 symbols that represent new concepts...
, Nsibidi
Nsibidi
Nsibidi is a system of symbols indigenous to what is now southeastern Nigeria that is apparently ideographic, though there have been suggestions that it includes logographic elements...
, used by the Igbo
Igbo people
Igbo people, also referred to as the Ibo, Ebo, Eboans or Heebo are an ethnic group living chiefly in southeastern Nigeria. They speak Igbo, which includes various Igboid languages and dialects; today, a majority of them speak English alongside Igbo as a result of British colonialism...
and Ekpe in West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
,
Emoticon
Emoticon
An emoticon is a facial expression pictorially represented by punctuation and letters, usually to express a writer’s mood. Emoticons are often used to alert a responder to the tenor or temper of a statement, and can change and improve interpretation of plain text. The word is a portmanteau word...
s and pictographs as used by the Sioux
Sioux
The Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...
and Ojibwa
Ojibwa
The Ojibwe or Chippewa are among the largest groups of Native Americans–First Nations north of Mexico. They are divided between Canada and the United States. In Canada, they are the third-largest population among First Nations, surpassed only by Cree and Inuit...
.
Terminology
The term "ideogram" is commonly used to describe logographsLogogram
A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are often commonly known also as "ideograms"...
in writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...
, Sumerian cuneiform and Chinese character
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
s. All these are correct, for they're all ideograms. Dongba script
Dongba script
The Dongba, Tomba or Tompa symbols are a system of pictographic glyphs used by the ²dto¹mba of the Naxi people in southern China. In the Naxi language it is called ²ss ³dgyu 'wood records' or ²lv ³dgyu 'stone records'. They are perhaps a thousand years old. The glyphs may be used as rebuses for...
used without Geba
Geba script
Geba is a syllabic script for the Naxi language. It is called ¹Ggo¹baw in Naxi, adapted as Geba, 哥巴, in Chinese. Some glyphs resemble the Yi script, and some appear to be adaptations of Chinese characters. Geba is only used to transcribe mantras, and there are few texts, though it is sometimes used...
decorating is an example of a real ideogram (it's also a pictogram).
In the history of writing
History of writing
The history of writing records the development of expressing language by letters or other marks. In the history of how systems of representation of language through graphic means have evolved in different human civilizations, more complete writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of...
symbols proceeded from ideographic (e.g. 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", viz. the letter
Letter (alphabet)
A letter is a grapheme in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Letters compose phonemes and each phoneme represents a phone in the spoken form of the language....
Aleph
Aleph
* Aleph or Alef is the first letter of the Semitic abjads descended from Proto-Canaanite, Arabic alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet-People:*Aleph , an Italo disco artist and alias of Dave Rodgers...
).
Bronze Age writing systems used a combination of these applications, and many signs in hieroglyphic
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...
as well as in cuneiform writing could be used either logographically or phonetically.
For example, the Akkadian sign AN
Dingir
Dingir is a cuneiform sign, most commonly the determinative for "deity" although it has related meanings as well. As a determinative, it is not pronounced, and is conventionally transliterated as a superscript "D" as in e.g. DInanna...
could be an ideograph for "deity
Deity
A deity is a recognized preternatural or supernatural immortal being, who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, and respected by believers....
", an ideogram for the god Anum in particular, a logograph for the Akkadian stem il-
Ilah
is an Arabic term meaning "deity" or "god". The feminine is ; with the article, it appears as . It appears in the name of the monotheistic god of Islam as , translated, that is, "the god"...
"deity", a logograph for the Akkadian word šamu "sky", or a syllabogram for either the syllable an or il.
Chinese characters
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
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
, 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
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
, Korean hanja
Hanja
Hanja is the Korean name for the Chinese characters hanzi. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation...
) 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 writingAsemic writingAsemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. The word asemic means "having no specific semantic content". With the nonspecificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. All of this is similar to the way one would...
- Energy Systems LanguageEnergy Systems LanguageThe Energy Systems Language , also referred to as Energese, Energy Circuit Language and Generic Systems Symbols, was developed by the ecologist Howard T. Odum and colleagues in the 1950s during studies of the tropical forests funded by the United States Atomic Energy Commission...
- Icon (computing)Icon (computing)A computer icon is a pictogram displayed on a computer screen and used to navigate a computer system or mobile device. The icon itself is a small picture or symbol serving as a quick, intuitive representation of a software tool, function or a data file accessible on the system. It functions as an...
- iConjiIConjiiConji is a free pictographic communication system based on an open, visual vocabulary of characters with built-in translations for most major languages....
(an example of an ideographic language) - Lexigram
- Logotype
- Sona languageSona languageSona is a worldlang created by Kenneth Searight and described in a book he published in 1935. The word Sona in the language itself means "auxiliary neutral thing", but the name was also chosen to echo "sonority" or "sound"....
- Traffic signTraffic signTraffic signs or road signs are signs erected at the side of roads to provide information to road users. With traffic volumes increasing over the last eight decades, many countries have adopted pictorial signs or otherwise simplified and standardized their signs to facilitate international travel...
- Isotype (pictograms)Isotype (pictograms)Isotype is a method of showing social, technological, biological and historical connections in pictorial form...
- Linear BLinear BLinear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization...
, which had an ideographic component
External links
- AIGA Symbol Signs Common US ideograms.
- American Heritage Dictionary definition
- Encyclopedia 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