About Us
Who We Are
IdeoLingo® is a woman, minority and veteran-owned business based in Southern California that develops fun and innovative study aids for students learning languages whose words and concepts are represented by ideograms. These languages include but are not limited to Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
Behind the Name
The name, IdeoLingo®, was conceived by combining the word ‘ideogram’ and ‘lingo’.
Ideograms are graphical symbols that represent ideas, rather than words. The term ideogram is commonly used to describe logographic writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese characters. Symbols in logographic systems generally represent words or morphemes rather than pure ideas. The term “ideogram” or “ideograph” is also used to describe two of the six ways in which Chinese characters were designed.
Lingo is a slang word for linguistics or language, especially a dialect, jargon or special vocabulary that one is not familiar with.
How it Started
According to the owner:
“Several years ago, I took an introductory Mandarin Chinese class at Berlitz. I ordered a pack of 800 flashcards to help me with character recognition but soon discovered the many drawbacks of flashcards. I was determined to master 100 words/characters at a time; however my stack of 100 flashcards, bundled up and secured with two rubber bands, was too bulky for me to carry around. While studying in the park, the wind caught several cards and blew them away. The next week I spilled coffee on them. On a flight to a business meeting, the man next to me was not pleased when the flashcards spilled from my tray table into his lap. My flashcards became warped, stained and dog-eared and I ended up stuffing them in a plastic sandwich baggie to keep them together.
I soon learned that the size of the flashcards was also an issue. In addition to using the flashcards for character memorization, I also tried to use them to understand sentence structure. In Chinese, the day, time of day and exact time precedes the subject, verb and object. The sentence "Do you go to church on Sundays?" would literally be translated into "Sundays you go church (interrogative particle)?" Because the flashcards were so big, one sentence in Chinese took up my entire living room floor.
I experimented with several software programs but none allowed for hands-on manipulation or rearranging words and characters. Magnets seemed to be the perfect solution. I found a company to produce the magnets and asked my Chinese teacher to help me develop the initial vocabulary list. A year later, production on these magnets began. After a quick self-tutorial of Adobe Illustrator, six proofs later and one test print, the first IdeoLingo® Chinese Magnet Kit was produced in Spring 2006.”
