My ambiguous time/distance indicator works well for “goal” because it can be either in time or space. This is one of those ids that I struggled with for years before I came up with something satisfying. A goal is something in distance or future, sticking up (prominent, erected) and radiating — an attractor.
Neo Ideograms 
I’m intrigued by something. If you were to only use your ideograms, would you actually be able to “translate” the text back into the original language, using the proper tenses, modes and overall syntax?
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Oh yes — absolutely, fully and clearly! Thanks for your question, Jihan. I should do some Japanese transcription for you like I said I would.
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On further thought, your question seems to assume that the ids for Japanese or German would be something other than Japanese or German, which they wouldn’t. There would be a version of ids for German, for instance, that might have distinctive ways to illustrate dative (indirect object) versus accusative (direct object) cases, which we don’t use much in English and I don’t distinguish between in my ids for English. And I would have different ids for distinctive German prefixes. So ids for German would be somewhat different, but with much in common, and if a person knew ids for English he’d be able to understand most or a lot of German writtten in ids. For Japanese you would need different ids to express wa, ga, wo, etc., (unless you just wanted to stick with the hiragana!) and different levels of politeness (itadaku, kudasaru, ageru, yaru, etc), which would be fun to work out. I have spent time doing that, but would have to go back and look because I don’t remember what I did. Since Japanese is a more distant language from English than German, it would be harder for a person who knew ids for English to read and understand Japanese written in ids, but you could still understand quite a bit. So ids would to some extent serve as an international language. Ideograms for basic terms and concepts would be the same: sit, eat, think, go, speak, red, happy, sad, free, man, child, are pretty much the same ideas in most languages.
I don’t have absolutely everything worked out even in my ids for English. I have an id indicator for passive voice but seldom use it because it doesn’t seem worthwhile. Of course I am not satisfied with some of my ids — some concepts are difficult to illustrate graphically!
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“Some concepts are difficult to illustrate graphically”. Exactly, hence the question. Japanese does not express much (or any?) of its grammar using characters, which convey ideas more than syntax.
I only have little knowledge of Chinese. Its grammar is miles away from Japanese or Korean. So no particles. And, based on what I read, it does not use tenses or modes either. If this is correct, this would mean concepts of time (i.e past, present, future) or uncertainty (e.g. conditional) would be conveyed through words rather than grammatical structures.
Romance languages, on the other hand (Spanish and Italian even more so than French), use a lot of tenses and modes (more than English). The subjonctive for instance is used absolutely every day and this mood also has different tenses.
I was thus interested to know how such concepts which don’t have a specific “idea” associated to them would be conveyed by ideograms and, in this instance, Chinese is not of much help as these specificities don’t exist in the language.
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Great comment, Jihan, thank you! I use my “if” ideogram over a verb to show conditional. Not really knowing a lot about grammar, I had to look up “subjunctive” to see how it differs from “conditional” : “of, relating to, or constituting a verb form or set of verb forms that represents a denoted act or state not as fact but as contingent or possible or viewed emotionally (as with doubt or desire)” from which I gather that “subjunctive” overlaps “conditional,” and I don’t feel much the wiser. It does make me think though, that I could also use my “possible” ideogram over a verb to indicate uncertainty and contingency “if I had enough money, I could . . . .” Or possibly my “want” ideogram. Japanese seems awfully vague to me, with the “ou” ending ( -darou, -mashou) indicating uncertainty, effort, desire, serving multiple purposes. With something like the “rare” inserted into “taberareru” — “can eat” I could simply insert my “can” ideogram. Or, I could just leave it to hiragana, like the Japanese do. I don’t feel any particular compulsion to express EVERYTHING in ideograms, but rather just aim to get the ideas across mainly with ideograms. Why not, as in Japanese, simply use ideograms but with letters to express endings? But they don’t that in Chinese, so your comment makes me think I really should learn more about the Chinese language. I suspect that what I have been doing and discovering with ideograms has already been done in Chinese. For instance, using ideograms, I sometimes don’t distinguish between verb and noun forms, simply because it’s unnecessary, superfluous, and obvious from context, and the ideograms are so semantically rich, they carry more of the information load.
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“I was thus interested to know how such concepts which don’t have a specific “idea” associated to them” doesn’t make any sense to me because a “concept” is about the same as an “idea,” though you are apparently making some distinction. Moods, tenses, etc., involve relationships that can be represented graphically. My past and past participle indicators are simple and make sense, and my use of “if” above a verb for the conditional is similarly simple and logical — shows the relationship.
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I mean that concepts such as “subjunctive” or “indicative” which are obviously incorporated into a word (e.g: “Je veux qu’il fasse ses devoirs”) and are not distinctive ideas such as cat, work, love, inside, outside, vehicle, hierarchy, etc.
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Very interesting, Jihan. What is an idea? What is “distinct”? If the grammatical form of a word indicates a grammatical relationship, a mood, a voice, is that not an “idea” and is it not “distinct” (definite, clear)? In your example sentence, “Je veux qu’il fasse ses devoirs,” (is “I wish he would do his homework” a good translation?) maybe my “if” above “faire” (= fasse) would not capture the meaning as well as “unknown” or “possible”. I can’t show these in this reply but will make a post about it right away. Indicative is the normal mode, so I wouldn’t show it with anything, but the subjunctive is, in my view, just a grammatical relationship and is an idea that can be expressed clearly enough with ideograms, but of course with an element of convention. I don’t have these things all worked out but see no obstacles to doing so.
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In this case, the subjunctive is only used because it is compulsory with “vouloir que”.
“I want him to do his homework” would be the correct translation.
I think you have clearly indicated how you would solve these with your system. I still tend to compare it with the only ideogram-based script I know, which is Japanese.
And the Chinese characters (in Japanese at least) are only used to convey semantical ideas and not grammatical concepts – this latter sentence might make my previous comments less abstruse.
Yet, if this is still not clear, allow me to use an example:
“Je veux qu’il fasse ses devoirs”.
“Faire” would be expressed with an ideogram conveying the meaning of “doing”. But beyond the meaning of the verb, other information is contained within this word : subjunctive + 3rd person singular.
The -se ending indicates this is a subjunctive. Something would need to be added to the “do” ideogram to convey the grammatical concept (i.e.subjunctive).
“my use of “if” above a verb for the conditional is similarly simple and logical”. Here you explained that would you add something (in this case ‘if’) above the verb (whose “semantical idea” would be conveyed by an ideogram).
I do not have time to expand further. But the bottom line of what I am trying to say is that Chinese, for instance, does not use ideograms to convey grammatical concepts. Ideograms are only meant to convey semantical ideas.
But the grammar of this language does not call for such grammatical ideograms, it seems. Languages with more complex tenses and moods (e.g. Spanish, Italian, French), if they were ever transcribed using ideograms, would need grammatical ideograms and not only semantical ones.
I hope this makes more sense to you.
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Thanks again for your comment, Jihan. ” . . . the bottom line of what I am trying to say is that Chinese, for instance, does not use ideograms to convey grammatical concepts. Ideograms are only meant to convey semantical ideas.” I don’t know Chinese, so don’t know if your first point is strictly true, but wouldn’t be surprised. I have read that Chinese, like English, depends more on syntax (word order). I know that I use ideograms to indicate grammatical ideas. I actually don’t see the importance of that discussion or find it interesting. Creatively using ideograms to intensify, clarify, explore and extend meaning interests me.
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