Table of Contents
Adapting Kanji to English
A while ago I started wondering if English would benefit from being written in Chinese characters, as the English spelling system is already something of a mess, maybe a pure logography would benefit English.
While Iâm not the first person to come up with this idea, the other attempts Iâve seen have been underwhelming, to say the least.
Notes
Kanji
Iâm using Kanji over Hanzi or Hanja because Iâm most familiar with Kanji over the other two, and because Japanese uses Kanji in a mixed script. If English were to adopt Chinese characters, then I believe it would likely use a mixed script.
English mixed script
While thinking about this, I realized English already appears to use a mixed script. It has two alphabets (uppercase and lowercase), similar to Japanâs two syllabaries (Hiragana and Katakana), and a logography. However, there appear to be far less logographs in English, and theyâre all almost exclusively used for short-hand. The best example I can think of is the #, which can be read as âhashâ/âhashtagâ/ânumberâ depending on the surrounding context.
Yingzi
Yingzi was something created by a conlanger mimicking Chinese characters, and one of the other attempts at creating a logography for English. While Iâve gone through the article, I think that Yingzi is honestly kind of stupid, but thatâs only because the symbols the author chose are over-complicated, and thus uncomfortable for actual use.
Kanji Only
Kanji adapted to English but without a mixed script, so purely logographic.
Since I havenât had the time, I havenât bothered to work on this yet.
Mixed Script
Kanji adapted to English with latin used in addition to Kanji in a mixed script.
Similarly to the previous section, I havenât worked on this yet.
English Logography
Since English already contains a few logographs, I figured it would make sense to mix the existing symbols together to create a unique logography. Iâve already identified a few symbols that could serve as good logographs, which are listed below.
Logographs
- Numerals
- 0
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- Currency symbols
- $
- Money, Currency, Dollars (american or otherwise)
- „
- Money, Currency, Yen, Yuan
- Âą
- Cents, pennies, small amounts of money.
- âŹ
- Money, Euro
- Other
- #
- Number, Hash, Numeral
- @
- At, location, area
- %
- Percentage, division
- ~
- âAroundâ; âRoughlyâ
- âȘ
- Music; Playful tone.
- X
- In regular English itâs already occasionally read as âcrossâ or âChristâ.