further on the "ideo-" issue...

So, real issue is that the symbols mean WORDS rather than IDEAS.

Um, ok. Sure. Yes. Fair enough. So perhaps "logographic" or "lexigraphic" might be better than "ideographic." Certainly.

I think this starts to beg the question about the difference between an "idea" and a "word." Seems also really easy to end up down a road that ends in Plato's Cave, too.

The real question this raises for me, though, is compound kanji that are made up of radicals - smaller versions of stand-alone kanji that, when combined, create a new kanji - therefore, a new word. A good one is "mori" 森　which is made up of three small versions of "ki"　木. Ki means tree, and mori means forest. This makes some sense. And I would argue that that's more than just a "word" - it's a word made from other words to convey a more complex idea involving the first word. So, OK, maybe I'm falling into the whole "simple early learner" trap mentioned before. But at some point we have to acknowledge that WORDS exist for the explicit purpose of communicating IDEAS, and are, in fact, representations of ideas, no matter the language. Obviously, where the early theorists went wrong was overstating the issue. But this guy feels sort of overcorrective, and that can totally cause problems, too.

Another fun example of compound kanji: "noisy" - 姦　"woman" - 女　(this is a bit unfair, though. that symbol is also part of the words for "adultery" and "rape" as well as "crafty" and "scheme" and "villain." So it's not necessarily good to be with many women, and the multiple women thing can express several ideas. However, there's also this proverb: 女三人寄れば姦しい - "Wherever women gather it will be noisy."