What are hieroglyphs? Where are they used and how to understand them? Is it possible to somehow translate such intricate signs into a language we understand, interpret and decipher? Sure you may. Among the hieroglyphs there are both ancient ones that have not been used for a long time, and modern ones, which are found in the writing of many oriental cultures. The first, of course, is more difficult to decipher, the second can be translated using Google. Therefore, in order to make it clear to everyone what it is and what it is eaten with, we will describe in detail what hieroglyphs are, what groups they are divided into and what they mean.
Definition of the term
In the generally accepted concept, a hieroglyph is a unit of writing that is used by some peoples. It can mean either a single sound, syllable or letter, or the whole word. Sometimes hieroglyphs can convey us a whole sentence or a certain phrase. The term itself has ancient Greek roots. This name was given to oriental written characters by the scholar Clement of Alexandria, who was engaged in deciphering such texts and derived a generalized concept of what hieroglyphs are. The definition that he deduced consisted of two words: “hieros”, which means “sacred” in ancient Greek, and “glyph”, which, respectively, translates as “cut out”. He attached sacred meaning to these texts, and therefore called them "a sacred carved letter."
Where can I find hieroglyphs
Now, in order to understand what hieroglyphs are, it is enough to look at the writing of the peoples of the Far East. However, in the old days, few of the inhabitants of the ancient world studied the culture of those peoples and their languages. Therefore, this term was most often used in relation to hieratics - ancient Egyptian writing. Texts in this language were deciphered in the era of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and even now many of them remain a mystery to historians. Modern hieroglyphs are found in the Chinese language and all its branches (Korean and Tangut), as well as in the Japanese script of all kinds and dialects.
Hieratics and its features
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs appeared along with the birth of the First Dynasty of the Pharaohs. The language of the ancient Egyptians in their phonetics has something in common with Semitic dialects, but to the same extent it is similar to the Cushite and Berber-Libyan linguistic branches. Throughout the existence of Ancient Egypt, only hieroglyphs were used for writing. Previously, they were carved exclusively on stones, on the walls of temples and houses. Later, papyrus was used to write laws, other documents and simple letters. Interestingly, the older the record, the easier it is to decrypt it. This is due to the fact that the most ancient records of the Egyptians were created thanks to miniature pictures that accurately displayed objects or actions. Later, much more complex hieroglyphs began to be used, the decryption of which was carried out by both European and Asian scientists. The main discoverer in this area is the French Chapmollon. But in fact, a far greater contribution to the decoding of ancient Egyptian writing was made by Persian Ibn Wahshiyya al-Nabati, who translated hundreds of spells and state texts into Arabic.
Japanese writing
The modern language of the Land of the Rising Sun is built partly on local dialects that previously had no grammatical basis, and partly on Chinese writing. Therefore, Japanese characters and their meaning often overlap with Chinese vocabulary, but in some cases it can be very difficult to find a similarity. So, the Japanese language is divided into three parts: kanji are the characters that came here from China, hiragana and katakana are the original Japanese alphabets.
Kanji
Chinese written characters are used to denote some nouns, for the basics of adjectives, as well as for writing proper names. The meaning and type of reading the kanji character depends on how he got to Japan. As a rule, it still depends on his place in the sentence, on the context. For many written characters, there are more than ten types of reading. Read, in turn, can be using one of two systems. One is called onyomie, and its essence is that the character is read in the Chinese manner. The second is called kunyemi - pronunciation in accordance with the rules of native Japanese speech.
Hiragana
Original Japanese characters and their meaning is transmitted using the Hiragana alphabet. It contains mostly vowel sounds with the exception of one consonant - “h”. These written characters are used to transform nouns and adjectives borrowed from kanji. With the help of hiragana, prefixes, suffixes, endings are attributed. Very often, hieroglyphs from this alphabet sound in colloquial speech and are found in Japanese correspondence. Hiragana is also a salvation for those who do not know kanji. It has many synonyms that can explain the meaning of morphemes borrowed from the Chinese language that are unfamiliar to some people.
Katakana
This native Japanese second alphabet is also used as an auxiliary. However, it does not intersect with kanji, unlike hiragana. If you do not know what the hieroglyph borrowed in Japanese from other Asian (except Chinese) languages means, then you can use one of the symbols related to the alphabet of katakana for its semantic transmission. Also note that the written characters of this alphabet are used only as clues, and are much less common in colloquial speech than hiragana.
Interesting Facts
For every European person, the concept of what hieroglyphs are, how they are read and how to understand them, is a very complicated matter. However, in the middle of the last century, a certain Charles C. Bliss made an attempt to create a hieroglyphic system of writing and speech that was uniform for the whole world so that people, say, from France could freely communicate with the inhabitants of China. However, his attempts were unsuccessful. But in Japan there is a certain kind of language called Romaji. This is a recording of words using the Latin alphabet, which immediately gives us the opportunity to read the character and pronounce it correctly.