Writing systems
History
Grapheme
List of writing systems
Types
Alphabet
Abjad
Abugida
Syllabary
Logogram-based
Related
Pictogram
Ideogram

Sample National Park Service pictographs

Pictograph from 1510 telling a story of coming of missionaries to Hispaniola

A pictogram (also spelled "pictogramme") or pictograph is a symbol representing a concept, object, activity, place or event by illustration. Pictography is a form of writing whereby ideas are transmitted through drawing. It is a basis of cuneiform and, to some extent, hieroglyphs, which uses drawings also as phonetic letters or determinative rhymes. Image File history File links Kielitynkäkuva. ... Writing systems of the world today. ... Writing systems evolved in the Early Bronze Age (late 4th millennium BC) out of neolithic proto-writing. ... In typography, a grapheme is the atomic unit in written language. ... Alphabets: , , , , Abjads: , , Abugidas: , , , , Logographic+syllabic: , , A list of writing systems (or scripts), classified according to some common distinguishing features. ... A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... For the traditional ordering of the letters of the Arabic alphabet, see Abjad numerals. ... An abugida or alphasyllabary is a writing system composed of signs (graphemes) denoting consonants with an inherent following vowel, which are consistently modified to indicate other vowels (or, in some cases, the lack of a vowel). ... A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. ... A logogram, or logograph, is a single grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). ... A Chinese character. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... The National Park Service (NPS) is the United States federal agency that manages all National Parks, many National Monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... A missionary is a propagator of religion, often an evangelist or other representative of a religious community who works among those outside of that community. ... Early map of Hispaniola The island of Hispaniola (from Spanish, La Española) is the second-largest island of the Antilles, lying between the islands of Cuba to the west, and Puerto Rico to the east. ... A concept is an abstract idea or a mental symbol, typically associated with a corresponding representation in language or symbology, that denotes all of the objects in a given category or class of entities, interactions, phenomena, or relationships between them. ... WordNet gives four main senses for the English noun object: a physical entity; something that is within the grasp of the senses; an aim, target or objective — see Object (task); a grammatical Object — either a direct object or an indirect object the focus of cognitions or feelings. ... Illustration by Jesse Wilcox Smith. ... Scribe Writing Writing, in its most common sense, is the preservation and the preserved text on a medium, with the use of signs or symbols. ... An idea (Greek: ιδέα) is a specific thought which arises in the mind. ... Drawing involves the choice of one or more tools from a wide variety and the choice of a support appropriate to that tool in order to make marks. ... Cuneiform script The Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. ... A section of the Papyrus of Ani showing cursive hieroglyphs. ... In mesopotamian cuneiform texts (i. ...

Early written symbols were based on pictograms (pictures which resemble what they signify) and ideograms (pictures which represent ideas). They were used by the ancient Chinese culture since around 5000 BC and began to develop into logographic writing systems around 2000 BC. Pictograms are still in use as the main medium of written communication in some non-literate cultures in Africa, The Americas, and Oceania. Pictograms are often used as simple symbols by most contemporary cultures. A Chinese character. ... (6th millennium BC – 5th millennium BC – 4th millennium BC – other millennia) Events 4713 BC – The epoch (origin) of the Julian Period described by Joseph Justus Scaliger occurred on January 1, the astronomical Julian day number zero. ... A logogram, or logograph, is a single grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). ... Writing systems of the world today. ... (Redirected from 2000 BC) (21st century BC - 20th century BC - 19th century BC - other centuries) (3rd millennium BC - 2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC) Events 2064 - 1986 BC -- Twin Dynasty wars in Egypt 2000 BC -- Farmers and herders travel south from Ethiopia and settle in Kenya. ... A world map showing the continent of Africa. ... World map showing the Americas The Americas are the lands of the Western hemisphere historically considered to consist of the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. ... Look up Oceania in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Pictography hinders search-engine capability, requiring symbol searching, while text-based writing also facilitates spoken words, even new words by use of pronunciation rules, and text enables sorting information alphabetically. Google search is the worlds most popular search engine. ...

History

The earliest uses of pictograms in Mesopotamia predated the famous Sumerian cuneiforms (the oldest of which date to around 3400 BC). As early as 9000 BC tokens marked with simple pictures began to be used to label basic farm produce, and around 6000 BC, with the rise of cities and spread of basic craftmanship, more complex pictographic tokens were devised to label manufactured goods. Eventually the tokens were replaced by clay tablets on which symbols were drawn with a blunt reed called a stylus. The impressions left by the stylus were wedge shaped, thus giving rise to the name cuneiform; wedge-writing. [1] Mesopotamia refers to the region now occupied by modern Iraq, eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and Southwest Iran. ... The Sumerian language ( EME.GIR15 native tongue) of ancient Sumer was spoken in Southern Mesopotamia from at least the 4th millennium BCE. Sumerian was gradually replaced by Akkadian as a spoken language in the beginning of the 2nd millenium BCE, but continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary... The cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. ... (35th century BC - 34th century BC - 33rd century BC - other centuries) (5th millennium BC - 4th millennium BC - 3rd millennium BC) Events Stage IIIa2 of the Naqada culture in Egypt (dated in 1998) Significant persons Ur-Nina first king of Lagash in Mesopotamia (c. ... (10th millennium BC – 9th millennium BC – 8th millennium BC – other millennia) Beginning of the Neolithic time period of the Holocene epoch. ... (7th millennium BC – 6th millennium BC – 5th millennium BC – other millennia) Events c. ... Small tablets made out of clay were used from late 4th millennium BC onwards as a writing medium in Sumerian, Mesopotamian, Hittite, and Minoan/Mycenaean civilizations. ... species Pragmites australis Reed is a generic term used to describe numerous plants including: Common Reed (Phragmites australis Cav. ... Modern stylus, used for touch-screen enabled devices such as the Nintendo DS and personal digital assistants Styli used in writing in the Fourteenth Century. ...

Water, rabbit, deer pictograms on a replica of an Aztec Stone of the Sun.

Though written Chinese is often thought of consisting of pictograms, less than 1% of all characters ever created have their direct origins in pictograms. (According to the entry "Chinese Language" in Wikipedia, the actual percentage is 4%). The letters of the Roman alphabet, however, do have their origins in pictograms. For example, the letter A represented the head of an ox, and if it is turned upside down, a bovine head with horns can be seen. Image File history File links Water,Rabbit,Deer. ... Image File history File links Water,Rabbit,Deer. ... The Aztecs were a Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican people of central Mexico in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries who built an extensive empire in the late Postclassic period of Mesoamerican chronology. ... The Aztec calendar was the calendar of the Aztec people of Pre-Columbian Mexico. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ...

The top traffic sign warns people of horses and riders

Pictograms remain in common use today, serving as signs or instructions. Because of their graphical nature and fairly realistic style, they are widely used to indicate public toilets, or places such as airports and train stations. However, even these symbols are highly culture-specific. For example, in some cultures men commonly wear dress-like clothing, so even restroom signage is not universal. Pictographic writing as a modernist poetic technique is credited to Ezra Pound though French surrealists accurately credit the Pacific Northwest American Indians of Alaska who introduced writing, via totem poles, to North America (Reed 2003,p.XIX). Download high resolution version (589x645, 113 KB)Road sign (horse). ... Download high resolution version (589x645, 113 KB)Road sign (horse). ... This article is about the Signs Signs, see Signs (disambiguation). ... An instruction is a form of information which is communicated in order to explain how an action, behavior, method, or task is to be begun, completed, conducted, or executed. ... A toilet is a plumbing fixture and disposal system primarily intended for the disposal of the bodily wastes: urine, fecal matter and vomit. ... Passengers bustle around the typical grand edifice of Londons Broad Street station in 1865. ... Ezra Pound in 1913. ... A Gitxsan pole (left) and Kwakwakawakw pole (right) at Thunderbird Park in Victoria, British Columbia. ...

A standard set of pictograms was defined in the international standard ISO 7001: Public Information Symbols. Another common set of pictograms are the laundry symbols used on clothing tags and chemical hazard labels. Standards are produced by many organizations, some for internal usage only, others for use by a groups of people, groups of companies, or a subsection of an industry. ... The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from national standards bodies. ... The International standard ISO 7001 of the International Organization for Standardization is the standard representation public information symbols. ... Laundry symbols, also called care symbols, are pictograms which represent different methods of washing, drying, dry-cleaning and ironing clothing. ... Corrosion Hazard label NFPA 704 standard hazard sticker. ...

Totem poles depict various stories through images

In countries or regions where two or more languages are used, the typical traffic sign is very often a symbol with no writing on it. This is the case for much of Europe and several parts of Canada. Many of these signs, however, offer an abstract symbol instead of a picture, and they cannot be considered true pictograms. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Unused traffic signs in Austria Most countries post signage, known as traffic signs or road signs, at the side of roads to impart information to road users. ... This article is 150 kilobytes or more in size. ...

In 2005, brazillian designer Daniel Motta mixed pop art and pictograms to create the "Poptograms", a book containing 101 drawings of poptograms.

The term "pictograph" can also be used to mean

• rock painting as distinguished from petroglyphs;
• a chart which represents numeric data by pictures.

Cave, or rock, paintings are paintings painted on cave or rock walls and ceilings, usually dating to pre-historic times. ... Petroglyphs on Newspaper Rock State Historic Monument, southern Utah, USA Petroglyphs are images incised in rock, usually by prehistoric, especially Neolithic, peoples. ... plotting redirects here. ... For images in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Images. ...

See also

• Chinese character
• DOT pictograms
• Emoticon
• Icon (computing)
• Ideogram
• Writing system
• Yakima Indian Painted Rocks
• Asemic Writing

Pictographs from the Great Gallery, Canyonlands National Park

漢字 / 汉字 Chinese character in Hànzì, Kanji, Hanja, Hán Tự. Red in Simplified Chinese. ... The DOT pictograms are a set of fifty pictograms used to convey information useful to travelers without using words. ... An emoticon (pronounced (IPA) ), also called a smiley, is a sequence of ordinary printable characters, such as :-), ^_^, ._. ... Nuvola icons for KDE are available in PNG format, which come in six sizes, and SVG format, which is scalable On computer displays, a computer icon is a small pictogram. ... A Chinese character. ... Writing systems of the world today. ... Indian Painted Rocks, Yakima, Washington Indian Painted Rocks is a tiny state park (approximately 2000 sq. ... Asemic writing is an open semantic form of writing. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (2288x1712, 757 KB) Summary This portion of the Great Gallery, found in Horseshoe Canyon, is an example of a Barrier Canyon Style pictograph (painted rock art). ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (2288x1712, 757 KB) Summary This portion of the Great Gallery, found in Horseshoe Canyon, is an example of a Barrier Canyon Style pictograph (painted rock art). ...

Notes

References

• Reed, Ishmael (2003). From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002, Ishmael Reed, ed. ISBN 1-56025-458-0.

Ishmael Scott Reed (b. ...

External links

• Official Poptograms website

• CAPL:The Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon, photographic illustrations of objects for English-German

This info came directly from (http://www.answers.com/topic/pictogram).