[[Image:Ideogram_ji.jpg|framed|A Chinese character. The ideographic representation of a ''child'' (子) beneath a ''roof'', which once had the meaning of "to care for", has since changed over the years to a ''deflective'' meaning of "character", "word" or simply, "ideogram".]] Ideograms (from Greek language ''ιδεα'' ''idea'' "idea" + ''γραφω'' ''grapho'' "to write") are said to be graphical symbols that represent words or morphemes. They are composed of visual elements arranged in a variety of ways, rather than using the segmental phoneme principle of construction used in alphabetic languages. The effect is that while it is relatively easier to remember or guess the sound of alphabetic written words, it is relatively easier to remember or guess the meaning of ideographs. The other feature of ideographs is that they may be used by a plurality of languages which may pronounce them differently while using them in conformity to the same norms. However, many disparate languages use the same (or similar) alphabets, abjads, abugidas, syllabary and the like, so this claim about ideograms is not unique to them. Ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, and Egyptians from the Mesopotamian and North African centers of civilizations all used some form of ideographical writing, as did the China in the Far East. Egyptian hieroglyphs and Sumerian language cuneiform (script) both derived from the use of ideograms as phonetic symbols, in much the same way as "4" is sometimes used to represent the word "for" as well as the number; it was the realisation that they were a form of phonetic writing that became the key to the deciphering of the heiroglyphic script (see Rosetta Stone). Chinese characters are conventionally called ideographs or ideograms, but their own linguistic tradition divides characters into at least five categories, of which "ideograph" is a plausible translation of only one or two. The Chinese classifications are (roughly translated) pictogram, ideogram, indicative, shape-sound compound, and borrowed. Borrowed characters are homophones used when no more "inventive" character emerges in common use. * Pictograms are characters that have derived from literal pictures of the objects they originally denoted: for example, the character used to write the word "moon", 月, is derived from a stylised picture of a crescent moon. * Ideograms proper, which are typically composed of pictograms arranged "with a convenient story" to suggest something more abstract--like sun and moon together to form a word like "bright" 明 or the character for "state" 國 which consists of a box-like border surrounding the "region" 域. Many westerners mistakenly believe that all Chinese characters are of this type, but in reality there are very few certain examples. * Indicatives 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. * The sound-shape compounds typically consist of a classifying unit (typically a pictograph like "fish" or "horse" or "water") combined with a "phonetic" unit that is prounced in the same way in one of the languages using the system. An example is the character 妈 or "mother". The classifying unit happens to be the left half of the character, meaning "female". The phonetic unit is on the right, which means "horse" but sounds like "ma". * Borrowed characters are homophones with little or no meaning relation that became current before any of the more "inventive" types did. The shape-sound type is most flexible and most new and "sub-species" characters use this principle of construction. The character 國 is an example of this, combining a classifying component 囗 and a phonetic component 或. New pure ideograms and pictograms are rare--though some have been somewhat playfully composed later such as a square box over a horizontal line to mean computer. By dictionary count the great bulk of characters (some estimate as many as 90 percent) use the shape-sound principle. Some have advocated calling these ''phonologograms''. Japanese language, or Kanji, as well as Korean language, or Hanja, are mostly Chinese characters, sometimes altered in shape, or native characters made to resemble Chinese characters. (The characters of Japanese origin are called 国字, or ''kokuji''; those of Korean origin, 국자 [國字], or ''gugja''). Both languages originally used Chinese characters not only to represent the original Chinese words and native words of the same meaning, but also phonetically. Since medieval times native scripts have been developed for phonetic use - katakana and hiragana in Japanese, both of which use heavily simplified forms of the characters that had been used phonetically, and the hangul script in Korean. == Terminological objections == The common misconception that Chinese ideograms somehow exist separately from spoken language, representing pure ideas, which can somehow be determined from their shape, has led to many attempts to abandon the name in favour of a term that more accurately represents their morpheme and phoneme) nature: that is, that they represent words and syllables, not ideas. A popular alternative is logogram, from the Greek language roots ''logos'' ("word") and ''grapho'' ("to write"). However, this term is not entirely accurate, because many words require two or more characters to write them. Other terms include Sinogram, emphasising 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) 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== * logotype * icon ==References== *DeFrancis, John. 1990. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0824810686 *Hannas, William. C. 1997. Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 082481892X (paperback); ISBN 0824818423 (hardcover) *Unger, J. Marshall. 2003. ''Ideogram: Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning''. ISBN 0824827600 (trade paperback), ISBN 0824826566 (hardcover) ==External links== *[http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html The Ideographic Myth] (an extract from DeFrancis' book) *[http://www.unicode.org/charts/unihan.html Unihan Database] (the Unicode consortium's database of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ideograms) *[http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html Jim Breen Kanji resources home] *[http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwjdic?1B Breen's Kanji search] (multiple methods, including English meaning, for translation) *[http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwjdic?1KG Breen's translation] Cut and paste kanji from web pages *[http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwjdic?1R Breen's Kanji search] (multi-radical method) Writing Writing systems
== Old talk == Have problems with this sentence. Within a given dialect, the pronounciation of a ideogram doesn't change much according to context. :Ideograms are said to represent concepts rather than words because often an ideogram can be pronounced differently depending on the context. ---- There is a contradiction between this article, which takes "ideogram" and "logogram" as synonyms, and David Crystal's ''Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language'', which treats "ideogram" and "logogram" as two rather different categories. The distinction seems to be that the "ideograms", though perhaps more abstract than pictograms, do not have anything to do with an underlying spoken language, while "logograms" stand for particular words in the underlying language. Anyone know how common such a distinction is? --User:Ryguasu 01:42 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC) :The impression I get is that this distinction is only made by a small number of pedants; everybody else really means "logogram" when they say "ideogram". How often do ''real'' "ideograms" actually turn up? --User:Brion VIBBER 07:01 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC) ::Short answer: never. Ideographic writing does not exist. See John DeFrancis' books "The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy" and "Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems". ----------- I changed the file type of a graphic for a character from png to jpg. Some has troube with my png file (why is that?). If anyone figures out the problem, I will appreciate. -- User:TakuyaMurata 23:17 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC) :the first version of the png you uploaded was currupted by text conversion (according to pngcheck) the second version you uploaded seems fine though. Note that many png decoders (especilly browsers) do virtually NO validation when decoding png files. User:Plugwash 04:54, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC) -------- Taku, im trying to use a table editor to fix the problem - also consider that your browser/screen/textsize setting may not represent the majority of users. Try not to make sweeping judgements about format problems - try to fix them if you know how. - Domo Arigato Gozaimasu, User:Stevertigo :Actually I don't see the reason why we want to move the picture to the right because it is not a compliment but what is actual an ideogram. I think it is more appreciate to discuss a character in the main text. -- User:TakuyaMurata 20:38 27 May 2003 (UTC) ----- What is "ideographis" in "or - more from the point of view of the ideographis - as simply "ideogram.""? "Ideographists"? But there's no such a word! Not even in Google. --User:Menchi 16:13 28 May 2003 (UTC) :The reason, "Smart guy" is that its a mis-spelling. Just like your writing "there is no such a word" is improperly spelled (there should be no "a" before "word."). Spelling errors happen, unfortunate as they may be - this has no doubt happened in writing Chinese as well, where someone wanting to write "mother" accidentally calls her "horse woman." ;) -User:Stevertigo :: Of course typo happens. I make it all the time. But I'm not sure what you you mean here. When I said "there's no such a word," I refer to "ideographists," which is what I think it's supposed to be. But since it's non-word, I'm not sure. So what is it supposed to be? "Ideograph"? But that's just a less common spelling of "ideogram." Please don't leave mistakes hang around once discovered. You did write it, right? --User:Menchi 16:46 28 May 2003 (UTC) ---- What is meant by alternated in ''Japanese ideograms, or Kanji, are mostly alternated Chinese characters'' escapes me! Please correct (if wrong) or explain (for the ignorant). User:Psb777 07:53, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC) :Looks like a misspelling of "altered". --User:Brion VIBBER 08:04, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC) ::Perhaps rather than "altered" it should be "derived from"? User:Psb777 10:16, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC) ---- I've cut the references to the parts of characters as radicals, since a) every character has a radical, regardless of how many elements it has or its method of formation, and b) many of the elements are not radicals. User:Markalexander100 02:57, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC) == happinesss == :Chinese characters, although usually classified as ideograms or logograms, are more alphabet-like than most people think. Most characters (some 90 percent it is estimated) consist of multiple elements, where one part indicates the pronunciation of the character, and another is connected with the meaning. For this reason, these can be called phonologograms. Hmmm, I have some problems with these sentences. Though it's true most characters contain multiple elements, is it true "one part indicates the pronunciation...another the meaning"? I know Chinese and I don't think that's the case. Others, what do you think? User:Mandel 21:04, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC) :It's true. Check out the history of Chinese characters (books, not the web!). Over 95% of all characters ever created fall into this category. However, to be accurate, one part does not indicate the meaning; rather, it indicates general semantic category, like "water" or "metal." Also, the part that indicates pronunciation doesn't have to agree 100%, and the relation between characters that were once pronounced nearly homophonously has often been obscured or even totally lost in Mandarin, which has undergone massive sound changes since the characters were stadardized a couple thousand years ago. == Ideograms vs phonetic writing == "They are composed of visual elements arranged in a variety of ways rather than using the segmental phoneme principle of construction familiar in alphabetic languages. The effect is that while it is relatively easier to remember or guess the sound of alphabetic written words, it is relatively easier to remember or guess the meaning of ideographs" If I remember well, DeFrancis's book disputes this opinion (he thinks the phonetic component of Chinese characters is underemphasized). User:Apokrif 09:15, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC) == The example == I'm having problems with the example (字). Specifically, would somebody kindly provide a reference for the claim that it once meant "to care for"? I can't seem to find one anywhere. If no authoritative reference is forthcoming, either the example should be changed or the claim about its "original" meaning removed. : "字" originally means "to feed, foster or bring up a child." Do you know the book 《說文解字》? It explains this character as "字, 乳也," translated as "字 means to (breast)feed." In another ancient mystical book 《山海經》, there is a sentence "山有苦木, 服之不字." Here 不字 means exactly "unable to bear or foster a child." --User:Wooddoo-eng 19:09, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC) == External links == Do we need ''four'' links to Jim Breen's Japanese-specific site? They might be prunable. I'm adding a link to the Unihan database, which is more language-neutral. == The character 國 == The article mentions the construction of this character twice - once it claims it's wholly symbolic (enclosure around region), but then in the next paragraph it contradicts that by claiming it's a semantic/phonetic mixture. Can someone who knows which of these is the generally accepted derivation perhaps remove the "wrong" one? :It is definitely a semantic-phonetic composition. There is a wide misperception that Chinese characters are ideographic and certain characters such as 國 end up being reinterpreted in order to fit this misperception. For a blatant example, see Noah's Ark#Ancient_Chinese_characters. Anyway, I think this article is in need of massive clean-up because it too easily confuses the separate concepts of ideogram vs. logogram (some of the previous comments above hint at it). This confusion helps spread the misconception that Chinese is an ideographic rather than logographic writing system. :Brion notes above that "this distinction is only made by a small number of pedants" but I think the distinction is more supported than he thinks. There are many sources that make this distinction. Since this is an encyclopedia, I feel it is important to be as accurate as possible, which is why I think some of the things in this article really should be moved to the logogram article. However, to reflect the fact that there are people who use the terms interchangably, a note stating such should be made on this page. Anyway, I'll see what I can do this weekend to help clean up the article. --User:Umofomia 23:28, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==large anonymous edit== there was a large edit recently by 81.86.133.45 with no edit reason [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ideogram&diff=0&oldid=12986170] i dunno enough about the subject to know if this is a good edit or vandism but i thought that such a big anonymous edit with no edit reason should be thoughoughly checked out by someone who does User:Plugwash 17:12, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
Words begining with Ideogram:
Ideogram
Ideogram
Ideogramme
Ideogrammes
Ideograms
Ideogram
[[Image:Ideogram_ji.jpg|framed|A Chinese character. The ideographic representation of a ''child'' (子) beneath a ''roof'', which once had the meaning of "to care for", has since changed over the years to a ''deflective'' meaning of "character", "word" or simply, "ideogram".]] Ideograms (from Greek language ''ιδεα'' ''idea'' "idea" + ''γραφω'' ''grapho'' "to write") are said to be graphical symbols that represent words or morphemes. They are composed of visual elements arranged in a variety of ways, rather than using the segmental phoneme principle of construction used in alphabetic languages. The effect is that while it is relatively easier to remember or guess the sound of alphabetic written words, it is relatively easier to remember or guess the meaning of ideographs. The other feature of ideographs is that they may be used by a plurality of languages which may pronounce them differently while using them in conformity to the same norms. However, many disparate languages use the same (or similar) alphabets, abjads, abugidas, syllabary and the like, so this claim about ideograms is not unique to them. Ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, and Egyptians from the Mesopotamian and North African centers of civilizations all used some form of ideographical writing, as did the China in the Far East. Egyptian hieroglyphs and Sumerian language cuneiform (script) both derived from the use of ideograms as phonetic symbols, in much the same way as "4" is sometimes used to represent the word "for" as well as the number; it was the realisation that they were a form of phonetic writing that became the key to the deciphering of the heiroglyphic script (see Rosetta Stone). Chinese characters are conventionally called ideographs or ideograms, but their own linguistic tradition divides characters into at least five categories, of which "ideograph" is a plausible translation of only one or two. The Chinese classifications are (roughly translated) pictogram, ideogram, indicative, shape-sound compound, and borrowed. Borrowed characters are homophones used when no more "inventive" character emerges in common use. * Pictograms are characters that have derived from literal pictures of the objects they originally denoted: for example, the character used to write the word "moon", 月, is derived from a stylised picture of a crescent moon. * Ideograms proper, which are typically composed of pictograms arranged "with a convenient story" to suggest something more abstract--like sun and moon together to form a word like "bright" 明 or the character for "state" 國 which consists of a box-like border surrounding the "region" 域. Many westerners mistakenly believe that all Chinese characters are of this type, but in reality there are very few certain examples. * Indicatives 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. * The sound-shape compounds typically consist of a classifying unit (typically a pictograph like "fish" or "horse" or "water") combined with a "phonetic" unit that is prounced in the same way in one of the languages using the system. An example is the character 妈 or "mother". The classifying unit happens to be the left half of the character, meaning "female". The phonetic unit is on the right, which means "horse" but sounds like "ma". * Borrowed characters are homophones with little or no meaning relation that became current before any of the more "inventive" types did. The shape-sound type is most flexible and most new and "sub-species" characters use this principle of construction. The character 國 is an example of this, combining a classifying component 囗 and a phonetic component 或. New pure ideograms and pictograms are rare--though some have been somewhat playfully composed later such as a square box over a horizontal line to mean computer. By dictionary count the great bulk of characters (some estimate as many as 90 percent) use the shape-sound principle. Some have advocated calling these ''phonologograms''. Japanese language, or Kanji, as well as Korean language, or Hanja, are mostly Chinese characters, sometimes altered in shape, or native characters made to resemble Chinese characters. (The characters of Japanese origin are called 国字, or ''kokuji''; those of Korean origin, 국자 [國字], or ''gugja''). Both languages originally used Chinese characters not only to represent the original Chinese words and native words of the same meaning, but also phonetically. Since medieval times native scripts have been developed for phonetic use - katakana and hiragana in Japanese, both of which use heavily simplified forms of the characters that had been used phonetically, and the hangul script in Korean. == Terminological objections == The common misconception that Chinese ideograms somehow exist separately from spoken language, representing pure ideas, which can somehow be determined from their shape, has led to many attempts to abandon the name in favour of a term that more accurately represents their morpheme and phoneme) nature: that is, that they represent words and syllables, not ideas. A popular alternative is logogram, from the Greek language roots ''logos'' ("word") and ''grapho'' ("to write"). However, this term is not entirely accurate, because many words require two or more characters to write them. Other terms include Sinogram, emphasising 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) 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== * logotype * icon ==References== *DeFrancis, John. 1990. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0824810686 *Hannas, William. C. 1997. Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 082481892X (paperback); ISBN 0824818423 (hardcover) *Unger, J. Marshall. 2003. ''Ideogram: Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning''. ISBN 0824827600 (trade paperback), ISBN 0824826566 (hardcover) ==External links== *[http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html The Ideographic Myth] (an extract from DeFrancis' book) *[http://www.unicode.org/charts/unihan.html Unihan Database] (the Unicode consortium's database of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ideograms) *[http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html Jim Breen Kanji resources home] *[http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwjdic?1B Breen's Kanji search] (multiple methods, including English meaning, for translation) *[http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwjdic?1KG Breen's translation] Cut and paste kanji from web pages *[http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwjdic?1R Breen's Kanji search] (multi-radical method) Writing Writing systems
Ideogram
== Old talk == Have problems with this sentence. Within a given dialect, the pronounciation of a ideogram doesn't change much according to context. :Ideograms are said to represent concepts rather than words because often an ideogram can be pronounced differently depending on the context. ---- There is a contradiction between this article, which takes "ideogram" and "logogram" as synonyms, and David Crystal's ''Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language'', which treats "ideogram" and "logogram" as two rather different categories. The distinction seems to be that the "ideograms", though perhaps more abstract than pictograms, do not have anything to do with an underlying spoken language, while "logograms" stand for particular words in the underlying language. Anyone know how common such a distinction is? --User:Ryguasu 01:42 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC) :The impression I get is that this distinction is only made by a small number of pedants; everybody else really means "logogram" when they say "ideogram". How often do ''real'' "ideograms" actually turn up? --User:Brion VIBBER 07:01 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC) ::Short answer: never. Ideographic writing does not exist. See John DeFrancis' books "The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy" and "Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems". ----------- I changed the file type of a graphic for a character from png to jpg. Some has troube with my png file (why is that?). If anyone figures out the problem, I will appreciate. -- User:TakuyaMurata 23:17 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC) :the first version of the png you uploaded was currupted by text conversion (according to pngcheck) the second version you uploaded seems fine though. Note that many png decoders (especilly browsers) do virtually NO validation when decoding png files. User:Plugwash 04:54, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC) -------- Taku, im trying to use a table editor to fix the problem - also consider that your browser/screen/textsize setting may not represent the majority of users. Try not to make sweeping judgements about format problems - try to fix them if you know how. - Domo Arigato Gozaimasu, User:Stevertigo :Actually I don't see the reason why we want to move the picture to the right because it is not a compliment but what is actual an ideogram. I think it is more appreciate to discuss a character in the main text. -- User:TakuyaMurata 20:38 27 May 2003 (UTC) ----- What is "ideographis" in "or - more from the point of view of the ideographis - as simply "ideogram.""? "Ideographists"? But there's no such a word! Not even in Google. --User:Menchi 16:13 28 May 2003 (UTC) :The reason, "Smart guy" is that its a mis-spelling. Just like your writing "there is no such a word" is improperly spelled (there should be no "a" before "word."). Spelling errors happen, unfortunate as they may be - this has no doubt happened in writing Chinese as well, where someone wanting to write "mother" accidentally calls her "horse woman." ;) -User:Stevertigo :: Of course typo happens. I make it all the time. But I'm not sure what you you mean here. When I said "there's no such a word," I refer to "ideographists," which is what I think it's supposed to be. But since it's non-word, I'm not sure. So what is it supposed to be? "Ideograph"? But that's just a less common spelling of "ideogram." Please don't leave mistakes hang around once discovered. You did write it, right? --User:Menchi 16:46 28 May 2003 (UTC) ---- What is meant by alternated in ''Japanese ideograms, or Kanji, are mostly alternated Chinese characters'' escapes me! Please correct (if wrong) or explain (for the ignorant). User:Psb777 07:53, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC) :Looks like a misspelling of "altered". --User:Brion VIBBER 08:04, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC) ::Perhaps rather than "altered" it should be "derived from"? User:Psb777 10:16, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC) ---- I've cut the references to the parts of characters as radicals, since a) every character has a radical, regardless of how many elements it has or its method of formation, and b) many of the elements are not radicals. User:Markalexander100 02:57, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC) == happinesss == :Chinese characters, although usually classified as ideograms or logograms, are more alphabet-like than most people think. Most characters (some 90 percent it is estimated) consist of multiple elements, where one part indicates the pronunciation of the character, and another is connected with the meaning. For this reason, these can be called phonologograms. Hmmm, I have some problems with these sentences. Though it's true most characters contain multiple elements, is it true "one part indicates the pronunciation...another the meaning"? I know Chinese and I don't think that's the case. Others, what do you think? User:Mandel 21:04, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC) :It's true. Check out the history of Chinese characters (books, not the web!). Over 95% of all characters ever created fall into this category. However, to be accurate, one part does not indicate the meaning; rather, it indicates general semantic category, like "water" or "metal." Also, the part that indicates pronunciation doesn't have to agree 100%, and the relation between characters that were once pronounced nearly homophonously has often been obscured or even totally lost in Mandarin, which has undergone massive sound changes since the characters were stadardized a couple thousand years ago. == Ideograms vs phonetic writing == "They are composed of visual elements arranged in a variety of ways rather than using the segmental phoneme principle of construction familiar in alphabetic languages. The effect is that while it is relatively easier to remember or guess the sound of alphabetic written words, it is relatively easier to remember or guess the meaning of ideographs" If I remember well, DeFrancis's book disputes this opinion (he thinks the phonetic component of Chinese characters is underemphasized). User:Apokrif 09:15, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC) == The example == I'm having problems with the example (字). Specifically, would somebody kindly provide a reference for the claim that it once meant "to care for"? I can't seem to find one anywhere. If no authoritative reference is forthcoming, either the example should be changed or the claim about its "original" meaning removed. : "字" originally means "to feed, foster or bring up a child." Do you know the book 《說文解字》? It explains this character as "字, 乳也," translated as "字 means to (breast)feed." In another ancient mystical book 《山海經》, there is a sentence "山有苦木, 服之不字." Here 不字 means exactly "unable to bear or foster a child." --User:Wooddoo-eng 19:09, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC) == External links == Do we need ''four'' links to Jim Breen's Japanese-specific site? They might be prunable. I'm adding a link to the Unihan database, which is more language-neutral. == The character 國 == The article mentions the construction of this character twice - once it claims it's wholly symbolic (enclosure around region), but then in the next paragraph it contradicts that by claiming it's a semantic/phonetic mixture. Can someone who knows which of these is the generally accepted derivation perhaps remove the "wrong" one? :It is definitely a semantic-phonetic composition. There is a wide misperception that Chinese characters are ideographic and certain characters such as 國 end up being reinterpreted in order to fit this misperception. For a blatant example, see Noah's Ark#Ancient_Chinese_characters. Anyway, I think this article is in need of massive clean-up because it too easily confuses the separate concepts of ideogram vs. logogram (some of the previous comments above hint at it). This confusion helps spread the misconception that Chinese is an ideographic rather than logographic writing system. :Brion notes above that "this distinction is only made by a small number of pedants" but I think the distinction is more supported than he thinks. There are many sources that make this distinction. Since this is an encyclopedia, I feel it is important to be as accurate as possible, which is why I think some of the things in this article really should be moved to the logogram article. However, to reflect the fact that there are people who use the terms interchangably, a note stating such should be made on this page. Anyway, I'll see what I can do this weekend to help clean up the article. --User:Umofomia 23:28, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==large anonymous edit== there was a large edit recently by 81.86.133.45 with no edit reason [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ideogram&diff=0&oldid=12986170] i dunno enough about the subject to know if this is a good edit or vandism but i thought that such a big anonymous edit with no edit reason should be thoughoughly checked out by someone who does User:Plugwash 17:12, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
I
IA | IB | IC | ID | IE | IF | IG | IH | IJ | IK | IL | IM | IN | IO | IP | IR | IS | IT | IU | IW | IX | IY | IZ |Words begining with Ideogram:
Ideogram
Ideogram
Ideogramme
Ideogrammes
Ideograms
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