Jon,
Most Kanji have Kun readings. The fact that they also have On readings as
well is not material. Calling Kanji ideographic is referring to their Kun
properties.
I find that most foreigners who know nothing about Japanese are completely
unaware of On readings and how Kanji are also used as a phonetic alphabet.
This does not take away from the fact that ideographic is about as close as
you can get in English to Kun readings. Kanji do express ideas independent
of pronunciation.
Carl
-----Original Message-----
From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org]On
Behalf Of Jon Babcock
Sent: Friday, June 01, 2001 3:17 PM
To: unicode@unicode.org
Subject: Why call kanji/hanji/hanja 'ideographs' when almost none are?
The Asia/East Asian/CJK thread reminded me of one of my own pet peeves,
the use of 'ideograph' to refer to kanji.
Perhaps some of the professionals on this list can enlighten me here. I
thought that an ideograph meant that the graph stood for an idea, not a
sound or a zographic image. Since only a very small percentage of kanji
do this ... I can think of only about ten ... why do writers on Unicode
lend credence to a fundamental misconception by using this term to refer
to the whole lot?
In English, wouldn't it be better to say 'han characters' or even just
'kanji' a word which has been in at least one English dictionary now for
over twenty years?
Jon
-- Jon Babcock <jon@kanji.com>
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