Many call this system "pictograms" for several reasons. One is that
the symbols in Naxi is truly pictures of physical objects. But a more
important reason is that this system serves more as a mnemonic device,
a visual aid for priests retelling myths. The Naxi pictographs do not
completely reflect the Naxi language, not even close. The symbols
themselves represent the physical objects they resemble. So, the
drawing of a tiger really mean a tiger. Symbols that seem to have a
less physical shape nevertheless still represent things in the real
world. For instance:
Furthermore, many words in a sentence, especially those meaning
abstract ideas or concepts, are left out. They have to be supplied
from the priest's memory. Sometimes a pictograph can appear only once
but read two or three times. And yet some other times a symbol is
present to eludicate the meaning of another symbol, but itself is not
read.
However, on the other hand, there is a feature in Naxi that does
reflect the underlying language. This manifestation is the rebus
principle, the use of a symbol associated with a particular word to
represent another word homophonous to the first word. For example, the
words for "food" and "sleep" are both pronounced "xa3", so
the symbol for "food" (which looks like a pot) is also used for "sleep".
Only with the knowledge of the Naxi language could the reader decode
this relationship.
A writing system must translate into the language it represents. In
Naxi the simplest form of language encoding can be found in the use of
the rebus principle, and from this I would say that Naxi is less like a
full-blown writing system, but resembles more the earliest stages of
scripts from around the world.
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