"Chinese Writing is Logographic: Evidence from East Asia Script Borrowing" featuring Professor Zev Handel (UW Seattle) author of Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script.

Linguists typically categorize symbols used in writing into two types: representing sound alone (like b) or representing meaningful linguistic units (like & representing ‘and’). Writing systems are usually also categorized in this way (e.g. Spanish writing is phonographic, with letters representing sound values alone; while Chinese writing is logographic, with characters representing meaningful morphemes). Nevertheless, the categorization of entire scripts as unequivocally of one type or the other has been challenged, on the grounds that all writing systems are partly phonographic and partly logographic. This would mean that no clear line can be drawn between these two types. I argue that historical patterns of borrowing of the Chinese script into languages like Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese support the traditional view that the writing system as a whole can legitimately be characterized as logographic.

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