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Re: NATLANG/Learning : Sanskrit

From:Stephen Mulraney <ataltanie@...>
Date:Wednesday, August 13, 2003, 2:45
Phillip Driscoll wrote:

> Just F.Y.I.: The term "ideograph" is currently deprecated. The > preferred term today is "logogram."
For some reason I have a distaste for both terms. Perhaps they sound dated. Or sound like they'll sound dated :).
> I'm not an expert on Chinese, but it's my understanding that > most Chinese logograms are compounds of basic symbols, > one of which indicates the pronunciation and the other a clue > to the meaning. One Chinese man with whom I worked told > me that he could make an educated guess of the meaning > if he encountered an unknown logogram.
I think he'd be making use of the context the hanzi occured in. Many of the sound/meaning combinations are no longer helpful: they were designed in many cases for, say, middle chinese, and the sounds that the 'rhyme' part of the character suggested may have changed since then. s. ---- In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled waffles. Stephen Mulraney :: ataltane at ataltane.net :: ataltane.net