4 ms·

Isn’t ancient Egyptian ideogrammatic?

• nine_k 3y ago
  Not entirely. Each image (hieroglyph) had also a phonetic value, sometimes so well known that most Phoenician characters were modeled after them. Basically all Western alphabets and abjads (like Arabic) stem from the Phoenician script, which is phonetic.
  • throwaway290 3y ago
    If each ideogram also has some phonetic value(s), does it make script phonetic? From your answer, yes Phoenician script is phonetic but there is nothing against Egyptian being ideogrammatic. Just like if phonetic kana is based on kanji it doesn't mean those kanji, a good chunk of which is ideogrammatic, is purely phonetic.
    • nine_k 3y ago
      It's an apt comparison. Chinese writing is highly ideographic, but many hanzi contain a purely phonetic element, as a pronunciation hint. Kana, a purely phonetic writing system, developed from hanzi, ditching the ideographic values.
      • tokinonagare 3y ago
        It's actually the opposite: Chinese script is quite phonetic (with a lot of different base characters though) with some semantic hints. This is this way and not the other way around because of the historical formation of the main category of characters (形聲) in which new parts were added to do semantic disambiguation between graphemes used to write (quasi-)homonyms.
        • throwaway290 3y ago
          My impression was that 90% kanji are significantly phonetic but the remaining ideographic 10% are actually some of the most frequently used (上/下 and others)? Which is what I referred to as "a good chunk of it". But I don't know what I'm talking about:)