Richard Cook asked which kanji I was thinking of that probably warrant
the term 'ideograph'.
And Michael (akerbeltz.alba@virgin.net) answered:
>Characters like 'above', 'below', 'center' ... depends on what you are
>willing to accept as 'an idea' and when you start calling it a 'snapshot
>of an action' like the words for 'music/medicine', 'learn' etc.
Yes, I was thinking of the dactylograms (C. zhi32shi4, J. shiji), those
dozen or two graphs representing motions or gestures of hand or fingers
that are one of the traditional six ways (liushu) to analyze Chinese
graphs. But it should be mentioned that even with the dactylograms, a
phonetic role cannot be totally dismissed. (See Paul L-M. Serruys,
C.I.C.M., Chinese Dialects of Han Time, UC Berkeley, pg. 32.)
But what about another of these six, the hui4yi4 (J. kai'i) graphs? If
these are ideograms, then the term can be said, stricto sensu, to refer
to at least a few percentage of the total repertoire of han characters
rather than to a mere handful. Perhaps someone (Thomas Chan?) could tell
us approximately how many graphs are classified as huiyi in the Kangxi
or another well-know dictionary? My guess is, a couple thousand. But in
practice this category would have to be admitted on a case by case
basis, I'm afraid.
As others have suggested, the nomenclature for kanji and their parts is
well-defined within the realm of kanji culture itself. Peter Boodberg at
UC Berkeley, made a serious attempt to translate much of this into
scientific English (by 'scientific English' I mean English that is not
afraid to draw from its classical heritage in coining new technical
terms) and was rewarded by decades of as-yet-unbroken obscurity. If such
translations are either too alien or not quite alien enough, the best
approach may be to use the terms used within kanji culture to discuss
kanji. And for the romanization of these kanji terms, maybe Japanese is
a better system to use, for one reason alone: no tones needed. (But a
greater potential for ambiguity.)
Some examples of technical terms about kanji from the realm of kanji
culture, romanized in Hepburn (Japanese) and pinyin (Chinese), with
examples of Boodberg's translations follow.
Note: Within kanji culture, kanji are classified as either 1) <1000 or
2) all the rest. Their structure is analyzed according to methods 3),
4), and 5).
1) bun wen2 : hologram, matrogram
2) ji zi4 : tmetagram, teknogram, digram, i.e., a segmentable graph.
3) shoukei xiang4xing2 : zogram (drawing from nature)
4) shiji zhi23shi4 : dactylograms (ah, e.g., giving the finger? ;)
5) kaisei xie2sheng1, or keisei xing2sheng1 : phonograms
6) bushu bu4shou3 : classifier (a list of sematics used to organize the
kanji repertoire for the past 1000 years.)
7) infu yin2fu2 : sematic (semantic hemigram)
8) shoufu sheng1fu2 : phonetic (phonetic hemigram)
9) ? : hemigram (Recall that any tmetagram (ji) can be divided into two
hemigrams.)
Perhaps someone has a suggestion for the term for 9). I guess C. pang2
J. hou U+65C1 is probably the best, although this suggests the hemigram
is 'alongside', and particularly along the right side, and C. bian3 J.
hen U+6241 refers to a hemigram along the left side. But what kanji
culture term would be used to refer to any hemigram, regardless of position?
Jon
-- Jon Babcock <jon@kanji.com>
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