logogramo

What it names. A logogram is a written sign that stands for a whole word or morpheme rather than for a sound. 4 is one. So are &, %, £ and @: you read them as words, and different languages read the same mark as different words, which is the giveaway. A letter records a sound; a logogram records a meaning.

The -gramo family. Once you spot gramm- you can read the rest of the shelf without a dictionary: telegramo at rank 2527 is a far-writing, diagramo a through-drawing, programo a fore-writing, anagramo a back-writing. All of them are Greek gramma, a thing scratched or drawn. So is gramo, the unit of mass, which reached us by the other half of the Greek word's meaning.

The false seam, and the linkifier falls for it. The log- here is Greek logos, a word. It has nothing to do with logi, to lure, or with loĝi, to dwell, which are separate Esperanto roots that merely start the same way. This is exactly the kind of resemblance the scientific vocabulary article warns about: international technical roots enter Esperanto whole, and they do not obey the cutting rules that native compounds do.

Where you meet living logograms. Chinese characters are the largest logographic system still in daily use, which is why our Mandarin course has to teach a writing system alongside a romanisation rather than instead of one. Japanese uses the same characters as logograms next to two syllabaries. Egyptian hieroglyphs and Sumerian cuneiform mixed logograms with sound signs too. There has never been a purely logographic script, and that is one of the more interesting facts in the study of writing.