East Asian Alphabets

About 2000 B.C. the Chinese developed a system of writing based on pictures. Each 'character' in chinese represents the thing it is a picture of, or an idea associated with it. This works well with Chinese for three reasons:

• It allows a single written language for multiple spoken languages;
• It avoids the confusion of the many homophones (words that sound alike) in the Chinese dialects; and,
• Chinese grammar does not require different forms for each word (unlike English, where, for example, the root word "write" has such forms as "wrote", "unwritten", and "writer's").

Movable type was invented in China in 1045 A.D., well ahead of Gutenberg -- however, due to the many symbols needed to write Chinese, it was impractical.

The Japanese writing system was based on the Chinese, but Japanese grammar required the addition of a syllabary (a pseudo-alphabet). Japanese is considered the most complex writing system in use today.

These East Asian writing systems (Chinese, Japanese, and possibly Korean) are the only ones in modern use that were not largely influenced by the Proto-Semitic alphabet.

The writing system of Vietnam is one of few in Asia based on the Roman script.