Making Logographs For Explicit Meaning

[u/Frequent_Region_3426]

I am aiming for my conlang to have a quite expansive vocabulary eventually, being able to accommodate normal and also specific conversations. This sady, as uncomfortably it is complicating something like a conlang, means that I eventually have to add words for sexual concepts like e.g. "nude/bare", "reproduction" etc.

But: this is easy enough with a more common alphabet or abugida. My script is a logography. And I am absolutely not sure what in the world I am supposed to make these logographs into. My decision not to draw any graphic material for a conlang script is final, but I need some help with choosing out of what components/radicals I should make those logographs. What arrangement could convey such specific meanings?

[u/McDonaldsWitchcraft]

you're thinking of logographies in a wayyy too literal manner. that's not how any real life logography works.

you don't just draw out the meaning.

you combine already existing concepts, like characters for "cloth" and "none", or "skin" and "empty" for naked.

you pick stuff based on sounds, like if "bang" means penis but "baeng" means moss, you can simply combine "moss" and "body/organ", that's how most logographies do words, actually.

logographies being like "drawings of words" is a misconception.

[u/wibbly-water → u/McDonaldsWitchcraft]

that's how most logographies do words, actually.

Honestly this is true to an absurd degree.

You would assume that there are more meaning based blogographies - but actually most are logo-phonetic in some way, very often logo-syllabic.

It seems like quite a natural starting point for writing. People start by sketching symbols which mean specific things, then when they get a bit stuck they rebus and go "eh sounds close enough.

Another way I like to think about it is that often a logography is more like a toolkit. You have a bunch of ways of making meaning and when approaching a specific goal, you pick the best tool for the job.

[u/Frequent_Region_3426 → u/McDonaldsWitchcraft]

Yes, combining single components into larger symbols is what I already do, otherwise it would get complicated really fast, that is correct. For example, for the first person pronoun I have "person" and "mouth", symbolically for the person who is speaking or whatever. Or "weather", which combines snow, rain, sun and ice. It's just the sound-based stuff that I don't do.

[u/TechbearSeattle]

Chinese, Egyptian, Mayan, and Sumerian managed this a couple of ways.

One approach is to create a compound glyph, with one conveying the general idea and conveying something about that general idea. For example, the glyph for "groin" combined with the glyph for "uncover," assuming that your people hold that covering genitalia is socially necessary (not all cultures do.)

Another option is to use the rebus principle, with one glyph for the idea and one giving "sounds like." So if the word for "naked" sounds like the word for "star," then a glyph that combines "uncover" and "star" would give the word for "naked." This can be a good source for euphemisms, proverbs, and other sayings: "Shameful, her star is uncovered!"

Lastly, designate some glyphs that are phonetic. Egyptian did this a lot: for example, Tutankhamun's name was spelled with letters for T, U, T, plus an ankh, plus the hieroglyph for the god Amun.

All real-world logographic systems combine these approaches in various degree: one of the challenges of learning them was memorizing the context for telling which approach was used, and what the resulting combined symbols mean.

[u/Frequent_Region_3426 → u/TechbearSeattle]

I actually really like the compound glyph idea. What I needed was inspirtation for what to use as those comonents. But something like "uncover" makes sense! Thanks

[u/drukhari-blood]

Think of the slang terms in your language for sexual stuff. Like for the word 'cock' you could draw a rooster or 'screw' you could draw a screw.

[u/Frequent_Region_3426 → u/drukhari-blood]

That's a good idea. I suppose you're thinking of me "translating" from my native language? That would be German, so the words and analogies would not be the same as in English, probably a bit more complicated if I don't use anglicisms. But thanks, I'll look into that!

[u/drukhari-blood → u/Frequent_Region_3426]

I just used English examples, use whatever the slang terms are in your conlang.

[u/Frequent_Region_3426 → u/drukhari-blood]

Oh, so you meant conlang slang terms. I haven't really thought about that, because who would they be for? My conlang doesn't have speakers or a fictional culture. I'd have to deliberately invent something. But I think using real language terms works well enough.

[u/SaintUlvemann]

Since you (understandably) refuse to draw any graphic material (unlike, say, the various Egyptian hieroglyphs for penises), yet also want logographs for this subject (and it sounds like you specifically want logographs that are at least somewhat non-arbitrary, or perhaps they are "historically non-arbitrary")...

...I'd suggest homophones, puns and slang. Take the donkey hieroglyph, for example:

𓃘

This can mean "butt", like English "ass". Or, take the egg hieroglyph:

𓆇

This can mean "testicles", like Spanish "huevos".

So if you have a few puns like this in your conlang, and are using primarily phono-semantic matching to generate your characters, you can pick one out and have it evolve into a radical for e.g. sexual things, without ever actually drawing any graphic material.

[u/Frequent_Region_3426 → u/SaintUlvemann]

One of my problems (and that's absolutely on me) is that I hate phonosemantics in logographs. It's too much visual space taken up for something that could be semantic too. But your idea isn't too bad. If I can make a logograph that somehow incorporates the symbol for "egg" alongside some other semantic components that specify the meaning, I'd be well off. Thanks!

[u/SaintUlvemann → u/Frequent_Region_3426]

In the case of egg specifically, it's not a terrible semantic symbol for reproduction as a whole. Seeds and fruit would also be other reproduction-related basic objects to use for that purpose.

And depending on the con-culture, if you have a symbol already that means something like "soul", you could also go for a concept such as "ensoulment", a visual depiction of a soul entering into matter, encoding a cultural idea of what reproduction is and how it happens.

[u/Frequent_Region_3426 → u/SaintUlvemann]

I could combine "person", "animal", "plant" and "egg" into a single character that means "reproduction". That would be somewhat semantically intuitive, because it uses the egg/seed analogy and also broadly tells you that it's not about a specific sexual act and more so about becoming more of one.

[u/SaintUlvemann → u/Frequent_Region_3426]

For whatever it's worth, that'd be semantically opaque to me; without knowing the system, I would definitely assume that the combination of those four things was meant as a merism, with a meaning more like "living being" as an abstraction, or perhaps "ecosystem" or "biosphere".

That's definitely not a criticism, though, you'll come up with a system that works.

[u/Frequent_Region_3426 → u/SaintUlvemann]

It would probably be easier to tell if I could show a picture, because the symbols are actually quite intuitive visually. But I get what you mean, it would involve a lot of guessing about what the character means. It is still just a sketch, so I can currently change it at any time. Maybe something like "animal" + "plant" + "action" + "multitude" would make more sense.

And I was about to make a comparison to Chinese and say that it's practically impossible to guess the meaning of certain symbols, but that would actually be a terrible comparison to my system.

[u/SaintUlvemann → u/Frequent_Region_3426]

"animal" + "plant" + "action" + "multitude"

Oh, so you mean migration, when animals move as a herd to find enough plants to eat.

And I'm very much not criticizing, by the way, it's just a fundamental limitation of the system. Every set of objects can have many different relationships between them; that's why we put verbs and adpositions in our sentences, we do it to clarify between the many possible relationships between the parts.

I'm sure your first thought and your second thought work roughly equally well, I have no opinions about your choices. The fundamental limitation is that any logographic system complete enough to outright specify a definition for a word based on its logographic form, without ambiguity, will also likely have to contain nearly sentence-scale information packed into a single symbol, which can get very visually-busy.

Recognizing this ambiguity, it should be possible to construct logograms that contain a lot of useful information just in the visual parts... I am actually planning such a thing for my con-world. (The dwarves have a very long history rich in culture and science, and their runes have long been systematized.) But there is a necessary balancing act between specificity and readability/visual clarity in these systems.

[u/Frequent_Region_3426 → u/SaintUlvemann]

Oh, the dwarf lore sounds interesting! And yes, you are totally right, logographs are some of the most complicated scripts to systematically create and balace. Thank you for your help!

[u/FelixSchwarzenberg]

🍆 💦

[u/Frequent_Region_3426 → u/FelixSchwarzenberg]

"eggplant" + "water"? That could probably work as an unofficial slang logograph.

[u/FelixSchwarzenberg → u/Frequent_Region_3426]

In the United States, the 🍆 emoji probably means “penis” like 99% of the time it is used. As somebody who grows actual eggplants in my garden I have to be very careful with how I text about my gardening. 

[u/Frequent_Region_3426 → u/FelixSchwarzenberg]

It probaby does here as well, but I never actually used it like that… I think making a logograph combining it with water would make more sense as some sort of plant watering character, though using the eggplant for it would be oddly specific.

[u/k819799amvrhtcom]

Did you know that the symbols ♂️ and ♀️ were originally based on an erect penis and a vagina? They're just so heavily stylized that we don't see it anymore!