logographs

Logographs are written symbols that convey meaning rather than a specific spoken sound. A logogram represents a word or morpheme, and a logographic writing system relies primarily on signs that encode semantic units rather than phonetic values. Many logograms can also carry additional phonetic or contextual information, producing mixed systems described as logophonetic.

Compared with alphabetic scripts, logographic systems require memorization of thousands of signs. Historically, logography has appeared in multiple civilizations, notably Chinese, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Mayan writing. Chinese characters are the most extensive example today; they function mainly as logograms representing morphemes, though their pronunciations vary with language and dialect. In Chinese, one character can convey meaning across dialects even as spoken forms diverge.

Other systems use logograms alongside phonetic signs. For example, ancient hieroglyphs and cuneiform combined logograms with signs that spell out sounds; determinatives indicate category or meaning without pronunciation. In the modern world, Japanese uses kanji as logographic characters in combination with syllabaries, while Korean historically used hanja and now relies largely on Hangul for phonology.

Etymology: the term logogram comes from Greek logos “word” and graphē “writing.” In scholarly usage, logography is distinguished from phonography (sound-based writing) and ideography, though the distinctions overlap in practice because logograms may carry symbolic meaning and phonetic value.