> From: Marco Cimarosti
> Are Egyptian hieroglyphs not logographic writing?
> OK, I'll take your word,
> but how about the many analogies between in the
> structure of the two writing
> systems? E.g., the Egyptian "determinatives" seem to
> match the Chinese
> "radicals"

The Egyptian determinatives are stand-alone signs,
whereas most of the Chinese radicals are not.
Also, the Egyptian determinatives play a grammatical
rôle, the Chinese radicals don't.

> while the Egyptian "ideographs" seem to
> match the Chinese
> xiangxing and xiangshi classes of the traditional
> Chinese six-class
> analysis.

Anyway, most Egyptian words were written using the
signs for their phonetic value, not for their
ideographic value. This is not the case in Chinese:
most characters (~90%) carry *both* a phonetic and an
ideographic value.

The only way you could draw a parallel between the
Egyptian system and the Chinese characters would be by
considering each Egyptian word a «character» which
couldn't be broken into smaller units. But it's simply
not the case: the Egyptian 'squares' can be further
broken into stand-alone signs. In this aspect,
Egyptian is more akin to Korean.

Cheers

Gianni






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