A Chinese logogram

A logogram, or logograph, is a single written character which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). This stands in contrast to other orthography, such as syllabaries, abjads, and alphabets, where each symbol primarily represents a sound or a combination of sounds. The image was created by Taku. ... A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes. ... In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest language unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ... The orthography of a language is the set of rules of how to write correctly in the writing system of a language. ... A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. ... An abjad is a type of writing system where there is one symbol per consonantal phoneme, sometimes also called a consonantary. ... An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters—basic written symbols—each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. ...

Chinese characters, used in Chinese and Japanese, make up a logographic system. Written Korean used a subset of Chinese characters as well until widespread use of Hangul after World War II, as did Vietnamese before French missionaries arrived in Indochina. Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... Hanja (lit. ... Hangul is the native alphabet used to write the Korean language, as opposed to the Hanja system borrowed from China. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km (over 11 miles) into the air. ... Indochina, or French Indochina, was a federation of French colonies and protectorates in south-east Asia, part of the French colonial empire. ...

A good example of modern Western logograms is the numbers - 1 stands for one, 2 for two and so on; the ampersand & is used for and, while @ sometimes stands for at. The roman ampersand on the left is stylised, but the italic one on the right is clearly similar to et. This article is about the roman character, ampersand, to learn about the group called Ampersand, see Team_Ampersand An ampersand (&) is a logogram representing the word and. ... Look up @ in Wiktionary, the free dictionary A commercial at, @, also called an at symbol, an at sign, or just at, is a symbolic abbreviation for the word at. ...

Compared to alphabetical systems, logograms have a disadvantage in that one needs many of them to be able to write down a large number of words. An advantage is that one does not necessarily need to know the language of the writer to understand them - everyone understands what 1 means, whether they call it one, eins, uno or ichi. Likewise, people speaking different Chinese dialects may not understand each other in speaking, but often can in writing, especially if they write in standard written Chinese. In addition, a logogram-based system uses fewer characters to express something than an alphabetic system, a benefit enjoyed by Chinese and to some extent Japanese users of mobile phone web browsers and other devices which display information on a small screen. An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters—basic written symbols—each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. ... Vernacular Chinese is a style of written Chinese associated with Standard Mandarin. ...

In stenography, a logograph or logogram is a single character which represents a word. Shorthand is a writing method that can be done at speed because an abbreviated or symbolic form of language is used. ...

See also

• Chinese character classification
• ideogram

There are several kinds of Chinese characters, including a handful of pictograms (象形; xiángxìng) and a number of ideograms (指示; zhǐshì), but the vast majority are phono-semantic compounds (形聲; xíngshēng). ... A Chinese character. ...

External link

• A Typographic Outcry: a curious perspective

References

• DeFrancis, John (1984). The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. 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.