Logogram Writing Systems, History & Examples

Writing has been invented at least three separate times in human history. The first known writing system, Sumerian cuneiform, developed c. 3500 BCE, was pictographic. However, within 400 years of its development, it had transformed into a basic logographic system of writing.

Other early writing systems, such as Egyptian hieroglyphs (created c. 3000 BCE) and the Mesoamerican Olmec hieroglyphs (created c. 900 BCE), were a combination of pictograms and logograms. In China, where writing was also invented anew, the early oracle bone script (invented c. 1250 BCE) was primarily logographic. Over centuries, Chinese writing became increasingly logographic. Many different languages, including Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, adopted Chinese writing during the era of Chinese Regular script (prior to Chinese evolving the modern Simplified and Traditional character sets).

Some logograms used in different logographic writing systems, along with their meaning, are listed below. It should be noted that in logographic writing systems, it is impossible to list all potential logograms, so this is a small set of examples and not an exhaustive list by any means, though the only currently used logographic writing systems (not including ideograms used as symbols as minor elements in a language, such as £ and $) are Chinese writing and Japanese kanji.

A logogram, also referred to as a logograph, is used to represent units of language called morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of language, but it is not necessarily a word. In English, for instance, both the word "be" and the suffix "-ing" are morphemes. While "-ing" is not a word, it does convey meaning as it transforms nouns into verbs and describes ongoing actions. Some writing systems also make use of ideographic characters, which represent more abstract ideas. Numbers are a good example of an ideogram, as are symbols like £ and $, which communicate monetary value relative to the numbers they are next to.

Logograms are used in logographic writing systems, one of the oldest kinds of writing systems. Sumerian cuneiform writing began using logograms c. 3100 BCE, as did the Chinese oracle bone script. Chinese writing is the oldest continuous logographic writing system; it is still used in a number of languages and Chinese dialects today, even if somewhat altered from the original oracle bone script. Other languages that use logograms today are Japanese (in kanji).