An example of a Chinese “character” can be found at the top of this page (my last name).

According to the American Heritage dictionary “symbol” is defined as “something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention, especially a material object used to represent something invisible”… which is clearly NOT the case when it comes to language.

To illustrate this point, let’s flip the situation, and imagine calling the English word “Yaung” a “symbol” for the Chinese character at the top of this page.  Silly, isn’t it?  The word “Yaung” is just that, a word.  Likewise, Chinese consists of characters, not symbols…  ’nah mean?  fo’ shizzle.

I suppose some COULD make a case for calling them “symbols.”  But I’m not talking “de jure” here…  I’m talking “de facto.”  At the end of the day, de facto, Americans call them “words” not “symbols”…  similarly, “real” Chinese people call them “characters” not “symbols.”

If you visit my store Building Characters, you’ll notice we use the term “symbol” and “character” interchangeably.  The challenge we have (according to our data) is that 73% of the time, folks type “symbol” instead of”character” into search engines to get to our site…  and as a small company, we need to balance staying in business with what is technically correct.  *sigh*

Hopefully, we’ll be able to grow sufficiently enough or awareness will hit enough of the “mainstream” such that this won’t be a challenge for us down the road… esp. with China’s rising economic presence, and the ‘08 Olympics coming up…  *fingers crossed*