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# Ideogram

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Ideograms are symbols that represent words rather than phonemes or syllables. Ideograms can contain a part to indicate pronunciation. This is true of some ideograms in Japanese. Unfortunately, entering ideograms here, to illustrate this point, seems impossible.

An interesting question is how one uses a dictionary for a language that uses ideograms. In Japanese, for example, where ideograms are called kanji, each ideogram has a radical, within it. A radical is a very basic ideogram, representing a symbol for a basic concept, like "man," "sun," or "tree" for example. When looking up a kanji, one must be able to isolate the radical from the ideogram. Then one counts how many additional strokes there are in the ideogram, in addition, to the radical. A Japanese kanji dictinary is arranged by radical first, then additional strokes. Therefore, one finds a definition, by looking up the kanji by radical plus additional strokes. For example, a particular kanji may be composed of the radicial for "man," and 7 additional strokes. To look this up one finds the radical for "man" in the dictionary and then passes through 1 additional stroke, 2 additional strokes, etc. until one finds entries for 7 additional strokes.The entry will be found here with a definition. To assist the user, there is often an index for the radicals at the end of a kanji dictionary (the end, because Japanese is read from right to left).

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Last edited June 26, 2001 5:43 pm (diff)
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