Re:Announcing Unicode 7.0
by sho_hn on Tuesday June 17, 2014 @09:51AM
(#7904381)
Unicode contains a wide range of different scripts.
For example, some are phonographic (the letters represent phonemes, i.e. speech sounds), others are logographic (the letters represent words, or morphemes).
Both of these can be featural: The Korean Hangul script is phonographic, but the letter shapes are not arbitrary. Some of them are visualizations of mouth shape or tongue position when producing the sound. For example the velar consonant ㄱ (somewhere inbetween the English g and k, roughly) is the tongue position as seen from the side.
A logogram can also be featural, i.e. it can look like the thing it represents. This would be the case for a glyph that means "thermometer" and looks to viewers like a thermometer. It could also be arbitrary - some shape that you just agree on to mean thermometer. Perhaps sharing some graphical aspects with topically related logograms.
They're all just spots on a spectrum.
(Edit: I briefly touched on pictograms vs. ideograms a bit more down below.)
For example, some are phonographic (the letters represent phonemes, i.e. speech sounds), others are logographic (the letters represent words, or morphemes).
Both of these can be featural: The Korean Hangul script is phonographic, but the letter shapes are not arbitrary. Some of them are visualizations of mouth shape or tongue position when producing the sound. For example the velar consonant ㄱ (somewhere inbetween the English g and k, roughly) is the tongue position as seen from the side.
A logogram can also be featural, i.e. it can look like the thing it represents. This would be the case for a glyph that means "thermometer" and looks to viewers like a thermometer. It could also be arbitrary - some shape that you just agree on to mean thermometer. Perhaps sharing some graphical aspects with topically related logograms.
They're all just spots on a spectrum.
(Edit: I briefly touched on pictograms vs. ideograms a bit more down below.)