Re: Kanji, Katakana, and Hiragana are different LANGUAGES.

It seems to me I heard somewhere that Phil Yff wrote in article
<a1t1sqzzjfo4.kx9skg6tw0pu.dlg@xxxxxxxxxx>:

On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 09:18:55 -0700, x01001x wrote:

Couldn't agree more. The various romaji systems are also writing systems
that can be used to represent the Japanese language.

No ones commenting that these "writing systems" are "pictographic"
writing systems.
Maybe that was more of an argument in sci.lang.... (?)

All writing systems by definition are graphic in nature. I agree with you
that no one has commented "these 'writing systems' are 'pictographic'
writing systems. There are no known pictographic writing systems ancient
or modern. The term pictograph is used to refer to some prehistoric cave
drawings or representing statistical information pictorially. It may also
be used to refer to a pictorial sign such as the international road signs
that I referred to in another post.

Generally, when people imprecisely use the term 'pictograph' in this
newsgroup, they are quickly set straight. I can't really address the
discussions in sci.lang - there aren't many relating to language.

All writing systems (ancient and modern) are abstractions. In other words,
any pictorial basis in the symbols is used in an abstract manner rather
than as a literal illustration. This is true even in a writing system such
as ancient Egyptian where what appear to be drawings of animals, things, or
people are actually phonetic glyphs or symbols used to express an idea
rather than a thing. Writing systems such as the three known Ancient
Egyptian Scripts (Hieroglyphics, Hieratic and Demotic), Chinese, Japanese
kanji, etc. that contain more than just phonetic symbols are referred to as
logographic systems.

Logograms are more prevalent than people think. Those that assume that the
writing system used to depict English is alphabetic do not realize that
numerals such as '2' and special characters such as '$' or '%' are
logograms. I suppose now that this has been brought to your attention, you
will hypothesize that the English alphabet and Arabic numerals are
different LANGUAGES.

The roman alphabet may memorialize ancient representations of concrete
objects:

a < alpha/aleph, etc = "ox", "ox horn"
b < beta/bet[h] = "house", "floor plan of tent"
g < gamma/gimel = "boomerang" [some think "camel"]
d < delta/daleth = "door", "tent opening"
etc.
--
Don Kirkman
.

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