On Wednesday, November 7, 2001, at 05:04 PM, william bright wrote:

> what's wrong with "hanzi"? that's what the chinese call them, and they
> invented them.
>

Mandarin-speaking Chinese didn't invent them. The best we could do going
along that route would be to go with something like "ͧͧχânʾ dzʿiʾ" (sorry
if this doesn't come out correctly, but Karlgren's bizarre romanization is
*not* very ASCII-friendly).

> of course the term is unfamiliar in the west, as is "logograph". so let
> the
> west become familiar with it! cheers; bill

This was actually argued out at some length not long ago on the Unicode
mailing list. The upshot of it all was that yes, we know "ideograph" is
wrong, but it's what's been used in the west for centuries and there
really isn't a potential replacement which is significantly better and
simple.

==========
John H. Jenkins
jenkins@...
jenkins@...
http://homepage.mac.com/jenkins/