Don H
Joined: 05 Aug 2007
Posts: 187
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 Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 2:27 am Post subject: Re: Whole words are ideaographs |
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wrote in message$0Mk@PC1.ACENET.COM.AU...
>
> It seems to me that whole words are ideaographs, just like Chinese
characters.
>
> Why don't people call them that?
>
# Because they are not. Chinese characters were originally pictures of the
things they represent, and have modified over time; yet the pictorial
significance remains. A Chinese person may speak Hakka, Teochew, Mandarin,
Cantonese, or any other dialect, but can still read the same characters.
True, a phonetic, or alphabetic, language such as English, and all
European languages, has letters which were once ideographic, but has evolved
far beyond that. In no modern sense, does the word COW represent a cow,
pictorially. The same mental image is represented by a different set of
symbols, depending what language you're dealing with - which is why, when
starting to learn a foreign language, you start with the Alphabet, and how
each letter is sounded. Of course, you can try the Whole Word technique, if
you wish.
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