Phonogram (linguistics)

A phonogram is a grapheme i.e. one or more written characters which represent a phoneme (speech sound),^[1] rather than a bigger linguistic unit such as morphemes or words.^[2] For example, "igh" is an English-language phonogram that represents the /aɪ/ sound in "high". Whereas the word phonemes refers to the sounds, the word phonogram refers to the letter(s) that represent that sound.

Phonograms contrast with logograms, which represent words and morphemes (meaningful units of language), and determinatives, silent characters used to mark semantic categories.

A writing system that consists of phonograms shows phonography and can be called phonographic.^[2]

References

^ Stötzner, Andreas (2003). "Signography as a Subject in its Own Right". Visual Communication. 2 (3): 285–302. doi:10.1177/14703572030023003. ISSN 1470-3572.
^ ^a ^b Coulmas, Florian (1999). The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing systems. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. ISBN 9780631194460.

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[1] Stötzner, Andreas (2003). "Signography as a Subject in its Own Right". Visual Communication. 2 (3): 285–302. doi:10.1177/14703572030023003. ISSN 1470-3572.

[bw-2] Coulmas, Florian (1999). The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing systems. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. ISBN 9780631194460.

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v t e Writing systems
Index of language articles
Overview	Language History of writing History of the alphabet Graphemes Scripts in Unicode
Lists	Writing systems Languages by writing system / by first written account Ancient languages corpuses by size Undeciphered writing systems Creators of writing systems
Types	Abjads Abugidas Alphabets Featural Ideogrammic Logographic Numeral Phonogrammic Pictographic Semi-syllabaries Shorthand Syllabaries
Current examples	Arabic Canadian syllabics Chinese Devanagari Hangul Kana Latin Mongolian
Related topics	In Africa In Southeast Asia