Re: scripts again

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 20:10:55 +0100 (BST)


Dave Cake quotes Person or Persons Unknown:
> >I suspect you have never studied Chinese (or in my case, Japanese).

> > When you go beyond simple characters (man, eye, tree, etc), the
> > ideographic meaning becomes totally lost.

> Thats why its ideographic not pictographic.

Strictly speaking, it's not even ideographic. Rather, it's logographic. Characters denote "words", not "ideas". I understand that no known writing system is actually ideographic in the strong sense (though I presume this is a hugely uncertain area as far as extinct scripts are concerned).

> Compare Gloranthan runes - it looks like a spiders web - oh, Fate,
> of course.

Gloranthan runes would seem to be ideograms, with in many cases a large side order of pictogram. Definitely not logograms, other than by some local convention to that effect. ("We call that sign "Change"." "Heretic!" *sounds of scuffling, off*)

Slainte,
Alex.


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