Thursday, March 10, 2011

What is unique about the Chinese written language system compared with those of the West?Look at the oracle bone and Chinese writing example and...

According to the text that you have included here, what is
unique (or at least very unusual) is that Chinese writing has not evolved to use an
alphabet or, at the very least, a syllabary.


In Chinese
writing, there are thousands of characters.  Educated Chinese people have to memorize
around 4,000 different characters.  There is no way to sound a word out (as you can if
you have an alphabet) unless you happen to have memorized the sounds that those
characters make.


This system is pretty hard to learn and
most languages have gone away from such systems.  Chinese hasn't and that makes it
relatively unique.

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