Language/Multiple-languages/Culture/Introduction-to-Writing-Systems

Writing systems are visual carriers of languages. They are tools, so they can be evaluated as tools. Here are the important information about them.

In progress.

Logogram

It is the earliest form of writing systems. As what its name suggests, they are pictures (logo).

Its advantage is able to express the meaning easily, even without needing unified pronunciations. Its disadvantage is having too many glyphs to memorise.

writing system	language	region	timespan	example
Anatolian	Luwian	Anatolia	14th to 13th century BC – 7th century BC
Aztec	Nahuatl	Mesoamerica	? – c. 1530
Cretan	Minoan	Crete	c. 2100 BC – 1700 BC	(Phaistos Disc)
Cuneiform	Sumerian, Akkadian, etc.	Mesopotamia	c. 35th century BC – 2nd century
Cypro-Minoan	Eteocypriot	Cyprus	c. 1550 BC – 1050 BC
Egyptian	Egyptian	Egypt	c. 3200 BC – 400
Han	Chinese, etc.	East Asia	2nd millennium BC –
Linear A	Minoan	Crete	c. 1800 BC – 1450 BC
Linear B	Mycenaean Greek	Mycenae	c. 1450 BC – 1200 BC
Mayan	Chʼoltiʼ, Yucatec Maya, etc.	Mesoamerica	3rd century BC – 16th century
Mixtec	Mixtec languages	Mesoamerica	? – c. 1530
Yi	Yi	Southwestern China	15th to 16th century –
Zapotec	Zapotec	Mesoamerica	5th century BC – 8th century

derivatives of Han

writing system	language	region	timespan	example
Chữ Nôm	Vietnamese	Vietnam	15th century – 19th century
Dongba	Naxi	Southeastern China	1000 –
Jurchen	Jurchen	Northeastern China	12th century–16th century
Khitan large script	Khitan	Northeast Asia	920 – 1191
Sawndip	Zhuang	Southern China	7th century –
Sui	Sui	Southern China	? –
Tangut	Tangut	Northwestern China	1036–1502

Han

Han writing system is the one of the logograms that are still used today.

It has several different scripts. There used to be many different writings of a characters. After the unification of China, Qin Shi Huang abolished other writings, only keeping Qin State's writing as the official one, written with the small seal script.

During its development, many modifications took place. Wrong characters and unorthodox character variants are plenty. For example, “肉” (flesh) became confused with “月” (moon) and as a result, many characters with meanings related to flesh have the radical 月.

The simplification of Han was also happening through history. For example, “爲” became “為” and finally “为”, like Picasso's bull. In People's Republic of China, there were two attempts of simplification of Han, one of which was successful and the other failed. In Japan, there was one simplification and it was successful.

Currently, it is being used in China and Japan regularly; in Korea and Vietnam sporadically.

There have been some attempts to abolish Han. In China and Japan, they failed; in Korea and Vietnam, they were largely successful. In the Republic of Korea, some people call for having Han along with Hangul in textbooks; In Vietnam, some people call for having Han as a compulsory course in liberal arts.

Related resources:

• Chinese Etymology 字源 https://etymology.azurewebsites.net/ | https://hanziyuan.net/

main scripts

script	example
oracle bone script
bronzeware script
seal script
clerical script
regular script

other scripts

script	example
cursive script
semicursive script