Section 1

First Steps

Pictography is the art of writing with pictures. If pictures were suitable only to represent concrete things their scope would be very limited. But this is not the case. Pictures can be used to represent verbs and abstract concepts and therefore a whole language can be built on pictures. A good question is to ask what is Pictography good for. Is it just a game or is it something else? We can find a practical use for Pictography in two fields:

First: Translating messages. Suppose someone here or in a remote Country (Finland, Greece, Mongolia...) wants to write something to be understood in a given area or anywhere in the World. He might choose English although he might not be as fluent in English as he should be. To learn to write English properly or any other conventional language takes a lot of time and effort.

The alternative is Pictography. It is so easy to learn as these images suggest. It takes only a few weeks and there is a lot of fun in it as it is based on easy drawings and logic.

Pictography could be thus a PIVOT language. You put your thoughts into Pictography and can send them anywhere; translators have only to know their own language plus the easy going Pictography.

Second: Visitors going into foreign Countries meet great difficulties to make themselves understood by the natives. When war or natural disasters hits a Country, foreing aid workers could not communicate easily with the local population in urgent matters.

Let's take the sentence: I go home

The Plural is made with a short line at the end of the pictogram: __

Now let's see some sentences:

We put a dot on top of the pictogram Go. As it is right on top of the picto, it means present time. We shall see how to form the tenses later on.

Let's look at the following pictograms (or "pictos" for short):

VERY IMPORTANT:

Easy as it is, Pictography should be learnt STEP BY STEP, always assimilating the signs and explanations before going into the next lesson.

Otherwise it would be like trying to learn multiplication before learning how to add.

The main consideration is that the pictos should be understood and picted easily. Other considerations are irrelevant.

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