That might be a better word to use, maybe. But I'm not sure there was an adequate word for the point I was trying to make.

The linguistic definition of ideographic is that it is a language which uses symbols to represent concepts, rather than just literal pictures (pictographic) or sounds (alphabet or syllabrie).

Linguistics textbooks as far as I'm aware do not define symbol in this context, but generally a symbol seeks to represent the concept. Emoji are great symbols - you see an emoji and you largely understand its meaning, even if you have never seen it before.

The modern Chinese writing system is so abstracted that even an otherwise highly educated person that just lacks exposure to Chinese written script would have absolutely no idea what any of the characters mean. 一, 二, 三, sure. Beyond that, no fucking clue.

So yeah, they wouldn't be legible. Because as symbols, they objectively suck until you learn the basic components, structure, and patterns of organization of the characters.

So to the extent that an ideographic language conveys words as ideas through symbology, and to the uninitiated these symbols lack all meaning, it's not really ideographic is it?

But yeah, not legible might have gotten the point across better.

> So to the extent that an ideographic language conveys words as ideas through symbology, and to the uninitiated these symbols lack all meaning, it's not really ideographic is it?

If I write math equations in an unfamiliar and inscrutable notation does that somehow make them "not math"?

I don't think ideography is in the eye of the beholder but rather the creator. Using the uninitiated as your standard doesn't seem to work very well for most things beyond the absolute basics.

The key observation here with relevance to the original topic would probably be that icons that are legible to the uninitiated are likely to be of benefit. Even if you don't really care to accommodate them it's still going to help you to get your choices adopted.

Thus an amusing thought occurs to me. If we did want to switch to Chinese characters for icons it would probably make sense to do so gradually, one app every six months or so.