A very accessible book on all this is "The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy" by John De Francis, published in 1984 by University of Hawaii Press. There is a brief synopsis on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chinese_Language:_Fact_and_Fantasy
- Tim On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 1:46 PM, John H. Jenkins <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 2013年1月30日, at 上午4:50, Andreas Stötzner <[email protected]> wrote: > > Most ideographs in use are pictographs, for obvious reasons. But it would > be nice indeed to have ideograms for “thanks”, > > > 謝 > > “please”, > > > 請 > > “yes”, > > > 對 > > “no”, > > > 不 > > “perhaps” > > > 許 > > – all those common notions which cannot be de-*picted* in the true sense > of the word. > > > I'm not being entirely snarky here. The whole reason why the term > "ideograph" got attached to Chinese characters in the first place is that > they can convey the same meaning while representing different words in > different languages. Chinese writing was one of the inspirations for > Leibniz' Characteristica universalis, for example. > > Personally, I think that extensive reliance on ideographs for > communication is a bad idea. Again, Chinese illustrates this. The grammars > of Chinese and Japanese are so very different that although hanzi are > perfectly adequate for the writing of a large number of Sinitic languages, > they are completely inadquate for Japanese. Ideographs are fine for some > short, simple messages ("The lady's room lieth behind yon door"), but not > for actually expressing *language*. > > And, in any event, if you *really* want non-pictographic ways of conveying > abstract ideas, most of the work has been already done for you. > > >
