Re: Ideographic Conlangs

From: "Tim May" <butsuri@...>
> Egyptian isn't ideographic, it's logographic.  It's an important
> distinction - all known scripts in human history have had a phonetic
> component (there have been attempts* to _construct_ ideographic
> scripts, but I don't think any of them have achieved completion, let
> alone been widely adopted).
But the phonetics often become divorced from the script, and so the script
doesn't synchronically have _any_ phonetic component.  Isn't the Japanese use of
kanji like this?   One character, without any change in form, can stand for
several different morphs of similar meaning (and probably different meaning too,
but I'm not exactly accomplished enough in Japanese to know any).


    *Muke!
--
http://www.frath.net/

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