Quote:
Originally Posted by IcewindDude
Sorry, I didn't mean to come off as heated  . I just enjoy nitpicking debates a little more than I should.
In any case, a Kanji character (putting aside the phonetic characters) is a pictograph. A picture with a meaning. This doesn't mean it's obsolete or anything. They've been simplified to the point where the picture is mostly obscure. But not to the point of say... the alphabet that derived from hieroglyphics. There are still obvious pictures in the kanji.
Characters are the symbols of a writing system collectively. It's going to be a symbol whether it's kanji, hiragana, or even the alphabet. It represents and idea (kanji) or a sound (hiragana, alphabet). English is too varied to narrow it down to a single word whether it be character, pictograph, symbol, or even pictographic symbols. There is no politically correct about this as far as I've seen. |
Sorry for the double post...
There are some still obvious "pictures" in kanji, but not all Japanese kanji are pictographs. Some were chosen for aesthetic reasons, some for aural reasons, some for symbols, and some are ??? So that's why we call them characters.