Andrew C. West wrote:

>
> On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 08:37:10 -0400, "Peter T. Daniels" wrote:
> >
> > Neither Chinese nor Zhuang is or was written with "ideographs." As you
> > say, they denote pronunciation and/or meaning, not "ideas." The
> > appropriate term is "logograph," or if you want to be picky
> > "morphograph."
>
> No doubt you're correct, but to be honest I don't really care that much about
> the terminology ... I'm just as happy calling them simply "characters"; but
> whatever the rights or wrongs of the term, "ideograph" has gained widespread
> currency, particularly in Unicode parlance. Still, if you prefer "logograph"
> I'll try to remember to use that term next time I talk about hanzi/kanji on this
> list.

Lots of linguists were involved in Unicode. I wonder how that happened.

It's the term "ideograph" that led people like Leibniz to waste much
time ssearching for "the perfect language" (Eco). DuPonceau took care of
it in 1838!
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...