A logogram (from Greek , "word" here "word" and "character, letter") is a single grapheme noting a lemma (word) wide and not only some of its phonemes. In most cases, there is nothing in logogram, its meaning (how it should be pronounced). In other words, it is the smallest unit of meaningful language as a sign unique writing that represents an entire word, regardless of language.

A logogram noting an abstract element of reality (as a concept, a morpheme or lemma ) is an ideogram. He who is directly in the drawing, a concrete reality is a symbol.

Systems logographic

The system is logographic writing system the longest. Indeed, it was used by the languages of the early civilizations of the Middle East, Africa, Asia and America such as:

• the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt ;
• the Hittite hieroglyphic language Luwian spoken in Anatolia ;
• writing cuneiform of Sumerian , the Akkadian and other Semitic languages ;
• the sinograms for the Chinese language , various nationalities of China and the Japanese , the Korean and Vietnamese ;
• the Maya writing various Mayan languages.

Logograms common Western languages

Western languages in Latin alphabet have a very small part of logograms in their writing. Yet among the few logograms used, some are very common for a job.

This is the case of figures called "Arab" , for example. Indeed, if we take the logogram 1, it corresponds in each language to a meaning different. These figures are, moreover, now used almost everywhere in the world , the number of signifiers that may represent a very important

• one or one in French ;
• one (or even a year) in English ;
• uno or una in Castilian ;
• wahid in Arabic ;
• ichi in Japan , etc..

Moreover, in a series of logograms as 10, 1 no longer read one, one, etc.. but all is said, respectively, ten, ten, diez, ( asra ), Ju, etc..

Besides the numbers, others are famous logograms:

• the ampersand , &, we read, his tongue, and, and, und, y, etc.. ;
• the arrobase , @, we can say at home in French and English.

Logograms have this feature that they allow a great mutual understanding written: a written price "100 " by a Polish remain comprehensible to a Basque not necessarily that he can pronounce it in Polish.

sinogram

In addition, sinograms (thus also the kanji and hanja ) are based primarily on the logographic system: intercomprehension written while still possible, to varying degrees, among speakers of very different languages such as Japanese or Mandarin. A Chinese man reads, for example, the character he represented while Mao neko for a Japanese. Both include chat. It develops more than a logographic writing involves a large number of different graphemes to represent all lemmas of lexicon (in fact, it is wrong to think that every match is unique lemma; article on sinograms explains why).

The main difficulty of these writings, however, is that faced with an unknown character, and according to its complexity, a player may not be able to guess the meaning, pronunciation, or both, whereas with an alphabet it is possible, through a limited number of signs, decipher the pronunciation of most words in a language and linking them to a graphic signifier, a signified that call.

For example, there is no need to specifically learn to read and write the word cat to learn to pronounce it. At the very least, the only difficulty lies in knowing whether the fact that the final consonant is silent: any francophone can read / a / (or / at / by mistake) and linking these sounds to good served (context to infer that it can not be the eye of a needle). Of course, the meaning is not always easy in the Latin script, especially when put into play are borrowed words poorly integrated design as in French.

For the Chinese, but not the Japanese or the Koreans, the deduction of signifier and signified of is facilitated by the fact that the right is the onomatopoeia of the cry of the cat and left the key representing an animal claw. However, the phonetic part of this ideological phonogram reads Miao and non-mao and the key indication that a very general way that this is an animal with claws, which are very numerous. It would be an exaggeration to say that the signifier as the signified are derived "naturally" to reading. It's still a misconception West (Chinese reads like a riddle ") against which amounted specialists sinograms as Viviane Alleton.

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