• Pictograms and ideograms
• Logographic
• Consonantal Alphabet
• Alphabet
• Syllabary

Two types of writing systems use characters that look like pictures or images of objects. There are two different ways that meanings can be attached to these pictures. In the first system, the pictures are called pictograms, and in the second they are called ideograms.

A pictogram is a direct representation of the object it refers to. The buttons of computer software demonstrate a pictogram system. The picture that looks like a printer means printer. At the Olympic Games in China, the designs used on signs directing people to different areas are pictograms of various sports. Go to the World Olympic site, and look carefully at the images as you click on the listed sports.

http://www.gigapxl.org/gallery-Newspaper.htm

On the other hand, there is another type of writing system that the images could be part of. If the wagon wheel means travel or move, then the image is no longer a pictogram because it no longer means exactly what it looks like. Instead, it is an ideogram. When a picture takes on meanings that are associated with the object it represents, it becomes an ideogram (idea gram). The image could even mean settlers instead of wheel. The image could be associated with the people who came across the prairies from the east because it is connected to the idea that they are the people who travel in wagons.

Thus pictographic writing systems are iconic, and ideographic systems are indexical. Both pictographic and ideographic symbols still have a direct connection to their referents, not s symbolic relationship. In a pictographic system, there is a sign-thing relationship. In an ideographic system, there is a sign-idea relationship. A different type of relationship exists in a third type of writing system. It is a sign-word relationship.

It is very likely that as a pictogram or ideogram evolved over time, the picture began to look less and less like the actual thing and more and more abstract. The stylized picture came to represent the word for the referent, not the referent itself.

This new system is a logographic (word writing) system, a sign-word relationship instead of a sign-thing relationship or sign-idea relationship.

While a system can theoretically move from pictograms to ideograms to logograms, no system is purely all one style. Let’s look at an example of how a symbol can move from being a pictograph to being a logograph by looking at Chinese.

Note how the original signs in the Oracle Bone column look quiote a bit like the things they mean. As each sign evolved over time, shown by moving from the left to right in each row, it is possible to see a loss of clarity in the shape of the sign. The original sign is a pictograph or ideograph, but the less obvious sign is a logograph. It only means the word human or the word moon.

• ELLs coming from a logographic writing system might not grasp the sound-symbol relationship immediately and be expecting a meaning-symbol or word-symbol relationship.

• Maxine Hong Kingston tells of her difficulty in learning English I, which she found rather irreconcilable with the meaning of the self and wondered how it could be so different from the Chinese character for I.

English x I

Chinese

Kingston was born and raised in America, but in a home where Chinese was the primary language. She was introduced to spoken and written English at around the age of 5. In her book, she explains how her perception of the English word I was that of a man with a flat hat standing with his toes pointed out.

It did not make sense to her that a complicated human such as herself would be represented by so simple a symbol. The Chinese symbol, on the other hand, expressed the image of the self much better in her opinion.