Tawhida Jahan

Chairperson
Dept. of Communication Disorders
University of Dhaka
▪ Blissymbols is a constructed language conceived as an ideographic writing
system.
▪ It is also called Semantography consisting of several hundred basic symbols.
▪ Each symbol is representing a concept, which can be composed together to
generate new symbols that represent new concepts.
▪ Blissymbols differ from most of the world's major writing systems in that the
characters do not correspond at all to the sounds of any spoken language.
▪ Blissymbols was published by Charles K. Bliss in 1949 and found use in the
education of people with communication difficulties.
▪ Bliss's system was explained in his work Semantography (1949, 2nd ed. 1965,3rd ed.
1978.)
▪ It had several names:
In 1942 I named my symbols World Writing, then chose in 1947 an international
scientific term Semantography (from Greek semanticos significant meaning,
and graphein to write) .... My friends argued that is customary to name new writing
systems after the inventors .... Blissymbolics, or Blissymbols, or
simply Bliss ....(1965)
▪ Blissymbls is a semantic graphical language that is currently composed of more
than 5000 authorized symbols –Bliss-characters and Bliss-words.
▪ It is a generative language that allows its users to create new Bliss-words as
needed.
▪ Unlike similar constructed languages, Blissymbolics was conceived as a
purely visual, speech-less language, on the premise that "interlinguistic
communication is mainly carried on by reading and writing".
▪ Blissymbols is used by individuals with severe speech and physical
impairments around the world, but also by others for language learning and
support, or just for the fascination and joy of this unique language representation.
1. Grant Stott (1997). A Great Australian. The Inventor of Semantography (Blissymbolics). Retrieved 18 October 2011.
2. Bliss, C. K. (1949). Semantography, a non-alphabetical symbol writing, readable in all languages; a practical tool for
general international communication, especially in science, industry, commerce, traffic, etc., and for semantical
education, based on the principles of ideographic writing and chemical symbolism. Sydney: Institute for Semantography.
OCoLC: 26684585.
3. Bliss, C. K. (1965). Semantography (Blissymbolics). 2d enlarged edition. A simple system of 100 logical pictorial
symbols, which can be operated and read like 1+2=3 in all languages (...) Archived October 4, 2011, at the Wayback
Machine. Sydney: Semantography (Blissymbolics) Publications. OCoLC: 1014476.
4. Bliss, C. K. (1978). Semantography: Blissymbolics. 3rd enlarged edition. Sydney: Semantography-Blissymbolics
Publications. ISBN 0-9595870-0-4.
5. The Fundamental Rules of Blissymbolics: creating new Blissymbolics characters and vocabulary" (PDF). Blissymbolics.org. Blissymbolics
Communication International (BCI). September 28, 2004. Retrieved 1 January 2014. (pp. 7–9)