For example: 漢字 from both 日本語 (JP) and 中文 (ZH) are derivative from semantic concepts based on what they saw around them (when both languages were first created), kind of like this:
There’s more examples of it I can come up with such as the following:
Also, both languages allow this writing orientation (R-L vertical):
I mean, they even have words that are “swapable” (mainly how characters are positioned but retain the same definition) as shown:
The thing is, both languages are logographic which allows for this form of conceptualization regarding vocabulary based on “shape”:
That is in contrast with languages that use alphabets (as those are based on sound) while 日本語 (JP) and 中文 (ZH) are “pictorial” if that makes sense, meaning each character conveys a word or concept rather than a single letter that has no inherent definition.
Can western languages be conveyed visually? Mostly no, it would be a huge stretch as the writing system isn’t based around visual inspiration, just like you mentioned. But tbf, I think with Chinese & Japanese, you’ll find many words that aren’t easily conveyed visually either, or that have heavily transformed into obscurity over time.
There’s at least one example: | || || |_
If you mean with their current alphabets not really. If you mean making a new writing system why not? You’ll still have trouble representing non-physical concepts but Chinese/Japanese can’t represent everything accurately either.
Not anymore. If you go back to ancient times pictograms existed. But as time marched on those got replaced with other alphabets or a way more schematic way of writing.
And historians are guessing.
Supposedly the Hungarian ancient runes are coming from so many places and some in bc3000 were kinda hieroglyphic - but todays way of writing has absolutely nothing left of it.
Tho Hungarian is a special butterfly bc technically not European but Asian Uralic language. And those runes coming from not Europe either.
*Edit: fixed an auto correctionSome of those looks like stretches
All of those look like stretches. Like if I imposed the small dipper constellation on top of a crack pipe and said that’s what it was.
It’s more that the characters have been evolving for a few millennia so they don’t look exactly as they did originally. For instance 山 meaning mountain was originally three distinct mountains and 目 used to be an eye.
Interesting read.
I think parts of Indo-European languages (nouns, verbs) can be represented by icons the same way a logographic language can be spelled out phonetically. The questions are: (1) how do you represent other kins of words, and (2) what icons to use 😵💫🤷🏾♂
✅, 🧭⬅️ 💬 👍 🖼️📝.
We have 69. In Turkish there is 31, which means masturbation. It is pictographic when you’re male and right handed.
Interesting. Never thought about it this way.
First thing to come to my mind: logograms. &, %, +, @. They are quite similar to Kanji. They each have different “readings”, like “&”, which can be “et”, but also “and” or “und” or “y”, depending on the kontext of the reader. So it is not phonetical, but defined pictorally.
Also, maybe Onomatopoesia? Buzz. Hiss. Sizzle. Pop. Slurp. Tick-tock. But I think that does not really meet your criteria.
Or concepts like a U-turn, T-shirt, V-neck, A-frame. They use the shape of a letter as a descriptive element.
And the last thing that comes to my mind would be zigzag (GER: Zickzack). It kind of depicts a broken, alternating line. It’s not really fully visual, but the reduplication and the harsh contrast of syllables try to immitate a stark alternation.
Maybe “synaesthesia” is a distant topic that might interest you, although it is a very broad field. Visual concepts may be distantly related to phonetic concepts and vice versa.
Yes. They kind of still are, because the Roman, Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek, Armenian, Georgian, and Hebrew scripts ultimately derive from Egyptian hieroglyphics, and hieroglyphics are even more pictorial than Chinese characters.
(Brahmic, Tibetan, and traditional Mongolian scripts also go back to Egyptian, but they aren’t western).
