{"id":106,"date":"2005-05-12T10:47:53","date_gmt":"2005-05-12T02:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=106"},"modified":"2005-09-19T11:12:39","modified_gmt":"2005-09-19T03:12:39","slug":"naxi-pictographs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2005\/naxi-pictographs\/","title":{"rendered":"Naxi pictographs"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is the text of a note I have sent to the U.S. Library of Congress concerning its discussion of its collection of Naxi materials<\/a>. Much of this beautiful and fascinating collection is available for viewing on line.<\/p>\n

The section of your Web site devoted to “Selections from the Naxi Manuscript Collection” makes frequent reference to Naxi as a “pictographic language.” This is a serious error, rooted in a common but mistaken conflation of language and script. No language is pictographic, as even common sense should be sufficient to reveal. (Surely no one believes that Naxi people are unable to speak to one another but must instead draw pictures in order to hold conversations.) <\/p>\n

Moreover, the Naxi pictographic texts are not even writing, properly speaking. The following is from The Languages of China<\/i>, by Robert Ramsey: <\/p>\n

In the strictest sense it is wrong to call these pictographs writing, because they do not normally represent the units of a language. They serve, rather, only as mnemonic devices to remind a priest of the details of a story he already knows by heart. … Moreover, many words of the text — especially those representing abstract concepts — are left completely unrepresented by symbols and must be totally supplied from memory. Sometimes a symbol is inserted into a frame only to elucidate the meaning of another symbol and is itself left unread. … The Naxi have never used these pictographs to communicate with each other — they do not exchange letters, write books, or even keep simple accounts and records with them. Anyone can appreciate the graphic beauty of a Naxi text, but only someone well-versed in the mystical lore of Naxi religion can interpret its meaning and translate it into language. It is not enough simply to be able to speak Naxi.<\/div>\n

The Naxi have a different but less interesting script that can be used for real writing. <\/p>\n

I hope you will correct the text of your beautiful and informative site accordingly.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This tendency to conflate language and script is one of the main problems interfering with many people’s understanding of the nature of Chinese characters. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is the text of a note I have sent to the U.S. Library of Congress concerning its discussion of its collection of Naxi materials. Much of this beautiful and fascinating collection is available for viewing on line. The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-writing-systems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}