Myth: ASL is Ideographic

ASL is sometimes called ideographic, like Chinese writing. Both ASL signs and ideographs are visible symbols. But, beyond this, the similarity ends. Ideographs are written symbols that represent spoken words. Historically derived from picture-writing, ideograms are not in themselves recognizable symbols. The original forms - pictures, icons - from which they evolved have been changed to suit the writers' needs. After years of applying certain writing conventions, the forms of the ideograms have become stylized and arbitrary. For example, in early Chinese writing, the pictograph for sun was:

The symbols of American Sign Language are visible representations of concepts. They represent neither spoken nor written words, thus making it meaningless to refer to ASL as ideographic.