Phonograms

His language is a hodgepodge of logograms and phonograms, which everyone learns in school.

It's better if you design a constructed language that has less than 100 logograms with a complement of phonograms. I would call it Weena from a character in a classic movie.

Using a limited number of existing logograms from natural languages, you can create a new language, complemented by a set of phonograms.

A city at night with neon signs in logograms and phonograms looks just marvellous.

An objective of my proposed conlang Weena is to have a reduced minimal set of sinograms with a complement of phonograms, so that the calligraphic traditions of the Far East may be preserved.

East Asian graphemes, particularly sinograms, often mesmerize Westerners. As a linguist, I tend more towards a very comprehensive grammar as Lojban's than just the graphical features of East Asian languages. Indeed, Westerners and Easterners alike may find mystique in such scripts. Korean, unlike Japanese and Chinese, can make do with just phonograms, as Koreans consign their sinograms to "higher" literature. In retrospect, I should have taken Korean in tandem with Japanese during university.

I must admit that reading Japanese with its cursive Hiragana phonograms, knife-stroke Katakana phonograms, and complicated Kanji logograms is very amusing. Printed Roman-lettered text of Western languages seems harder for my eyes and has less visual fluidity.

Many Japanese think that the heart of their written language is the two sets of Kana phonograms—Hiragana and Katakana—not Kanji logograms, which they relegate to older people.

In Japanese, Hiragana and Katakana are sets of phonograms, specifically syllabograms. Kanji are logograms, specifically sinograms.

My unfinished conlang prototype is Weena, which would have tentatively 80 sinograms and a complement of phonograms. Weena would be minimalistically like a bonsai of Japanese, with the intent of encapsulating the calligraphic tradition of the Far East. The name alludes to an Eloi character in The Time Machine franchise of H.G. Wells.