Other European Alphabets

I checked your link out. Maybe it is not as bad as you say it is. First, although people are prone to forgetting how to exactly write characters by hand, they are able to recognize far more characters than before, as the evidence of Japanese kanji use increasing due to computer/phone input methods. Second, it doesn't affect literacy as people are able to READ the characters. This is a similar phenomenon that I think all university students can attest to in the Western world today. I have trouble spelling rudimentary words in essays sometimes, like the word weird is often written as "wierd". All kinds of spelling issues and writing issues have developed from the takeover of the typing technology with spell-check but also due to quick finger reflexes where you do not consciously think of each letter being pressed on.

No, not really. I've read various studies, such as this one, which have suggested that around 50-60% of the general populace have significant difficulties in reading commonly used kanji, let alone writing them. Japanese people can get away with this because they can technically resort to kana if they forget a particular character, but a similar leeway cannot be applied to Chinese, as pinyin and zhuyin (bofomofo) are only used as phonetic guidelines, not as writing systems that can stand on their own. It also doesn't make sense to compare Chinese characters directly to English, as the latter in itself is extremely convoluted in terms of spelling due to preserving historical pronunciations, and in many respects represents the "worst-case scenario" for an alphabet. As a result, a much better comparison would be Spanish, as it largely tends to represent pronunciation well.

AND Finally, seriously, this is an unfair argument in the first place. This phenomenon relates to INPUT methods. Prior to modern technology, who would be noticing "character amnesia" in the logograpm world if computers/romanization input methods simply do not exist! The literate in ancient times would not have been suffering from this. Ironically, it seems that this kind of technology has boasted literacy, because people can recognize more characters though they cannot write them precisely/correctly by hand. I know many Chinese people born in Canada/USA who can read restaurant menus but cannot hope to write those same read characters out. And they all went through Chinese school once/twice a week for some time in their lifetime.

No, it is not. You specifically mentioned contemporary literacy rates, which also have nothing to do with trends that had existed centuries ago. If you had mentioned historical literacy rates, I would have stated that it would have taken much more time and effort for peasants in China to memorize thousands of characters, as opposed to their contemporaries in Europe memorizing alphabets, although both would have involved low literacy rates overall. In addition, pinyin in China and zhuyin (bofomofo) in Taiwan, not to mention overseas populations utilizing similar systems, are specifically used to teach schoolchildren how to read. This situation as a whole is probably the biggest factor contributing to higher literacy rates, and would have been unnecessary if Chinese characters on their own were more then enough to teach children how to write. Does this mean that most of the Chinese population is functionally illiterate? No. Does this mean that it's much more likely for Chinese speakers to forget how to write specific words? Yes.

Also, as someone who has minored in Chinese, and was required to handwrite an essay every week for two semesters, I will say that it takes much more time and effort to write in Chinese than in English. Although students who grew up in China would have been much more exposed to hanzi for a far longer period of time, this still doesn't change the fact that learning how to write characters requires much more investment than doing the same for alphabets, although "spelling" can certainly pose as significant issues for both.

The problem I have with this is that it does not recognize spheres of influence, but rather makes it seem as if it was based on the people of certain countries weighing the merits of different writing systems. Just as the Greeks were never presented with the Phoenician alphabet alongside Egyptian hieroglyphics from a linguist, the people of Thailand did not at any time in their history give such conscious decision making in deciding Brahmic over Chinese characters. The spheres of influence of India were much greater in Southeast Asia in earlier times, before China even made it down to the Southern Yue tribes of Canton, Vietnam, Yunnan etc. Whereas the Japanese and Koreans, could only accept Chinese characters because that was the only system introduced to them in the time period they decided to adopt writing.
Finally, I would argue that the modern conscious decisions to reject Chinese characters in local writing systems like in Vietnam or Korea is mainly due to geopolitical and ideological developments in the 20th Century. Let's face it, China became isolated post 1949.

Both India and China contacted various entities within Southeast Asia around the 1st century AD or so, mostly through trading routes, although Chinese individuals probably arrived slightly later. In any case, it was not until the 7th century or so that the Tibetan and Khmer scripts came into use, despite the fact that China had contacted Funan around the 3rd century, along with various other states within Southeast Asia over the next several centuries. As a result, while China was not as culturally influential as India, there would have been enough time for states in the region to consider the viability of Chinese characters if they had been so inclined. In addition, other scripts, such as Burmese, Thai, and Lao, were adopted centuries later, at which point the respective states would have experienced significant trading and diplomatic relations with China as a whole.

Your analysis also ignores scripts in Central Asia, as various entities, such as the Xiongnu and Xianbei, never adopted Chinese characters to represent their respective spoken languages, while the Uyghurs specifically created the Old Uyghur alphabet based on the Sogdian one. Also, the Mongols used writing systems derived from Uyghur (Classical Mongolian script), Tibetan ('Phags-pa), along with Chinese characters, all in order to represent Mongolian. Despite the fact that the first two were invented in the 13th century, along with the gradual sinicization of the Mongol court by the mid-14th century, the latter two quickly fell into disuse soon after the Yuan collapsed. The Manchus also created the Manchu alphabet after inspiration from the Mongolian one before establishing the Qing, despite the fact that they had also undergone significant sinicization for centuries prior.

In addition, both Korea and Vietnam abandoned Chinese characters not due to China's sudden "isolation" after 1949, but because of their status as colonies, although for different reasons. Korean individuals began to promote Hangul through publications in order to resist Japanese influences after it was annexed in 1910, although it had continuously been in informal use since the mid-15th century, while other systems, specifically Idu, Gugyeol, and Hyangchal, which were used to represent the Korean language, never became widely used due to their complexities. On the other hand, while Chữ Nôm, which was a extremely complicated system of both original and modified Chinese characters, had managed to remain in use within Vietnam for centuries, they were eventually abolished soon after French missionaries began to promote Quốc Ngữ by the early 20th century.

Both countries continued to promote their respective alphabets despite their eventual independence by the mid-20th century, and it's worth noting that North Korea even went as far as to ban the use of hanja in official texts, despite continuing to retain close ties with China, although the South still retains some for disambiguation purposes. These conditions were possible in both countries, as opposed to that of Japan, as both languages have much more syllables than can be solely rendered through Chinese characters (Japanese has far less syllables than even Mandarin), not to mention that it is virtually impossible to represent native articles and conjugations only through characters without introducing a convoluted set of rules, which had occurred in historical "native" systems, causing them to remain unstandardized, along with significant comprehension difficulties.

Ultimately, the fact that Chinese characters are the only logograms currently in use suggest that attempting to do the same for other writing systems would have become extremely untenable, as they were retained partly due to tradition, and partly due to the gradually increasing occurrence of homophones after over two millennia of evolution.

EDIT: I also forgot to mention that within Maritime Southeast Asia, the Malay language adopted several Brahmic scripts by the 7th century, due to influences from India, although they were eventually replaced by the Jawi alphabet (derived from Arabic) in the 14th century after Arab traders arrived, and was then in turn displaced by the Malay alphabet, or Rumi (Latin alphabet), by the 20th century due to influences stemming from British colonialism. As a result, it would have been more than possible for other scripts to be adopted through cultural diffusion across the region, suggesting that Chinese characters were ultimately not adopted by entities across Southeast Asia for cultural and practical reasons.

EDIT 2: Here's another link concerning the issues associated with kanji literacy, along with one discussing hanzi literacy.
 
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Finally, I would argue that the modern conscious decisions to reject Chinese characters in local writing systems like in Vietnam or Korea is mainly due to geopolitical and ideological developments in the 20th Century. Let's face it, China became isolated post 1949.
Definitely second this.

While it's true that Chinese characters are harder to write, it's not really such a problem with computerized word processing and simplified written forms. Also, convenience isn't always better; I'd say that having to learn 2000-3000 characters must do good things for your cognitive skills. Japanese research IIRC has also suggested as kanji gets recognized significantly faster than kana or Roman letters.
 
Definitely second this.

While it's true that Chinese characters are harder to write, it's not really such a problem with computerized word processing and simplified written forms. Also, convenience isn't always better; I'd say that having to learn 2000-3000 characters must do good things for your cognitive skills. Japanese research IIRC has also suggested as kanji gets recognized significantly faster than kana or Roman letters.

I wonder how something like a keyboard or a typewriter would develop in a logographic system without experience with a phonetic alphabet, provided it lasts long enough for that technology to develop. Based on what I've found on modern Chinese keyboards, you would have to type in pinyin and the computer converts it to the appropriate hanzi, if I understand correctly.
 
Maybe have the Minoan Language (in OTL still undeciphered) survive, so that its Cretan Hieroglyphic orthography would be used instead of

Quite easy would be to have the Achaemenid Persians conquer Greece, as the almost did in OTL, and have for some reason the Persian Language, written in semi-syllabic Old Persian Cuneiform, eventually supersede Imperial Aramaic as the lingua-franca of the Empire; one reason for this switch in the vehicular language could be the extreme dominance of Indo-European Languages, like Persian, Greek and Latin, in Europe. The Aramaic Consonantary would have been unsuitable for Greek or Latin without marking at least some vowels, and it would have been much easier to utilize an existing script for all languages of the empire than to have two (Cuneiform of Elamite, unrelated Old Persian Cuneiform for Persia and the Aramaic Consonantary for Aramaic, respectively).
 
Syllabics, alphabets, and abugidas are all phonetic systems, in that they represent sounds, rather than meanings (roughly). Linear B is a syllabic with logographic components, IIRC, and I *think* that was the last logographic system in Europe proper, although that doesnt mean thtey couldnt be imported from elsewhere.
The Chinese writing system is also a largely phonetic system. It's just that two millennia of sound changes have rendered it much less useful in that regard.
 
I wonder how something like a keyboard or a typewriter would develop in a logographic system without experience with a phonetic alphabet, provided it lasts long enough for that technology to develop. Based on what I've found on modern Chinese keyboards, you would have to type in pinyin and the computer converts it to the appropriate hanzi, if I understand correctly.
In Taiwan you can use zhuyin, which is similar to the Japanese kana but for Chinese. There are also keyboard layouts that can type characters based on their parts (called radicals) but AFAIK this requires specialized training.
 
The Chinese writing system is also a largely phonetic system. It's just that two millennia of sound changes have rendered it much less useful in that regard.

So I've been informed, though a strange one from what I've gathered. I was trying to understand the basics of how it worked for a personal linguistics project, and I walked away gathering that it's structured quite a bit differently from the common portrayal
 
Definitely second this.

While it's true that Chinese characters are harder to write, it's not really such a problem with computerized word processing and simplified written forms. Also, convenience isn't always better; I'd say that having to learn 2000-3000 characters must do good things for your cognitive skills. Japanese research IIRC has also suggested as kanji gets recognized significantly faster than kana or Roman letters.

Yes, but Japanese managed to retain the borrowed Chinese terminology (on'yomi), in addition to mapping the pronunciations of native Japanese terminology (kun'yomi) directly onto the characters themselves, making kanji more useful. However, Korean and Vietnamese eventually abandoned the latter method within the last several centuries, in part because attempting to do so proved to be too complex after attempting to thoroughly incorporate native grammar as well, as neither used a system analogous to Japanese kana in formalized texts. As a result, Korean currently only uses borrowed Chinese pronunciations to pronounce characters, although they are still learned in conjunction with their "native" meanings. In addition, although native terminologies make up over 50% of the Korean language, Sino-Korean ones only compose around 35%, and although the proportion increases significantly for the latter within more formal documents, it's important to note that the usage of hanja (instead of hangul) also increases accordingly.

While retention of kanji in Japanese may end up boosting cognitive skills, the complex relationship between on'yomi and kun'yomi means that it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to know how to pronounce a certain character (or word) without providing any context, and virtually impossible to pronounce names regardless of context. As a result, while it is easier to deduce the meaning of a word written in Japanese, as opposed to English, it is much easier to guess how to pronounce a particular word for the latter.

In addition, simplified written forms developed over two millennia, which meant that numerous variants existed, and were extremely difficult to read without training when presented in a calligraphic format, while computerized systems were developed recently, so they would have been largely irrelevant in terms of comparisons millennia ago.

The Chinese writing system is also a largely phonetic system. It's just that two millennia of sound changes have rendered it much less useful in that regard.

To be specific, around 90% of Chinese characters are composed of a "sound" (phonetic) and "meaning" (semantic) component, in which there is no systematic way to tell which is which without learning all of them beforehand, and attempting to categorize them in this way still requires memorizing around 200 radicals, which generally correlate with their general "meaning," not "sound." In any case, many of the indicators had been obscured by the time that Middle Chinese was spoken around AD 500-600 or so, and became less relevant over time, while the simplified forms (many of which had been written centuries ago) further distorted the connections between the phonetic and semantic components.
 
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As a result, Korean currently only uses borrowed Chinese pronunciations to pronounce characters, although they are still learned in conjunction with their "native" meanings. In addition, although native terminologies make up over 50% of the Korean language, Sino-Korean ones only compose around 35%, and although the proportion increases significantly for the latter within more formal documents, it's important to note that the usage of hanja (instead of hangul) also increases accordingly.
When you say "borrowed Chinese pronunciations", do you mean the Korean equivalent of onyomi, or an actual attempt to say the Chinese the way it's spoken in China?
As for the retention of hanja/kanji in partly-sinicized languages, I'd say that it's definitely a good idea for borrowed words, because at least in Japanese that's where the homophones are found in greatest profusion. I've heard that in Korean the words for "verb" and "freeze to death", which are both Sino-Korean, sound the same. While these two can be easily distinguished by context, almost certainly there would be more ambiguous cases particularly as you start dealing with rarer vocabulary.

While retention of kanji in Japanese may end up boosting cognitive skills, the complex relationship between on'yomi and kun'yomi means that it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to know how to pronounce a certain character (or word) without providing any context, and virtually impossible to pronounce names regardless of context. As a result, while it is easier to deduce the meaning of a word written in Japanese, as opposed to English, it is much easier to guess how to pronounce a particular word for the latter.
This is true, but I'd say it not even that simple. The kunyomi may indeed be hard to deduce because there is in fact no set rule for it. これ, which means "this", used to have a kanji form that came from Classical Chinese: 是. In onyomi it clearly should be pronounced shi. Of course, これ is only written in kana nowadays, but there are tons of Japanese readings of kanji that use native words based on the feeling of whoever created the word. Sometimes even Western words that would now be rendered in katakana were given kanji, such as 煙草 for トバコ (tobacco).

But while no set rule exists, there are plenty of conventions, just as in English spelling, that help one guess how a word ought to be pronounced. Compound words are probably going to take onyomi. Kanji with a bunch of kana trailing behind it is kunyomi. Once you know a pair of kanjis should take onyomi, you can look at the kanji itself to guess how it may be pronounced, based on your prior knowledge.

I guess that if Korean doesn't use onyomi to the same extent that Japanese does, the use of hanja is indeed of limited use.
 
When you say "borrowed Chinese pronunciations", do you mean the Korean equivalent of onyomi, or an actual attempt to say the Chinese the way it's spoken in China?
As for the retention of hanja/kanji in partly-sinicized languages, I'd say that it's definitely a good idea for borrowed words, because at least in Japanese that's where the homophones are found in greatest profusion. I've heard that in Korean the words for "verb" and "freeze to death", which are both Sino-Korean, sound the same. While these two can be easily distinguished by context, almost certainly there would be more ambiguous cases particularly as you start dealing with rarer vocabulary.

I meant the Korean equivalent of on'yomi, and I'm not sure why or how Korean would use contemporary pronunciations used in Mandarin (or another dialect), given that they are phonologically very different. In any case, on'yomi is much more complicated than the Korean "equivalent," as the former mostly consists of Go-on and Kan-on, along with occasional Tō-on and Kan'yō-on, due to occasional borrowing of terminology for over a millennia while phonological shifts continued to occur in China. On the other hand, the vast majority of hanja only have one Sino-Korean pronunciation mapped onto each character, of which most were loosely adopted around the 7th-8th centuries through Silla's contacts with the Tang, although a minority have been based on earlier or later pronunciations, not to mention that most alternate pronunciations are linked with alternate meanings.

"동사" (動詞-verb) and "동사" (凍死-freeze to death) are indeed pronounced the same way, although they can be distinguished in context, not to mention that both words are rare, as the former would generally be limited to dictionaries, while the latter would probably have limited use outside of newspapers and scientific articles. However, my point was that ambiguity and etymology would only pose as a significant issue when highly specialized terminology is taken into account, as the general populace would use much more native vocabulary (60-80%), while the small proportion of Sino-Korean terms in use would be ubiquitous enough not to warrant hanja. As a result, while the general population can essentially get by without knowing more than the basic hanja, and not using them in writing, individuals who have gone through higher education would certainly be required to know over 2000 characters in order to deduce etymology and reduce ambiguity, which is why they are still taught, while hanja still continues to be used in formal documents.

This is true, but I'd say it not even that simple. The kunyomi may indeed be hard to deduce because there is in fact no set rule for it. これ, which means "this", used to have a kanji form that came from Classical Chinese: 是. In onyomi it clearly should be pronounced shi. Of course, これ is only written in kana nowadays, but there are tons of Japanese readings of kanji that use native words based on the feeling of whoever created the word. Sometimes even Western words that would now be rendered in katakana were given kanji, such as 煙草 for トバコ (tobacco).

But while no set rule exists, there are plenty of conventions, just as in English spelling, that help one guess how a word ought to be pronounced. Compound words are probably going to take onyomi. Kanji with a bunch of kana trailing behind it is kunyomi. Once you know a pair of kanjis should take onyomi, you can look at the kanji itself to guess how it may be pronounced, based on your prior knowledge.

I guess that if Korean doesn't use onyomi to the same extent that Japanese does, the use of hanja is indeed of limited use.

The biggest issue that I can see with kanji is that many of the characters would have 2-3 pronunciations in on'yomi and 1-2 in kun'yomi, which would mean that a specific character would tend to have around 3-5 different pronunciations, although the entire range would be far larger. While specific words, generally consisting of two characters, would generally have only one (or two) acceptable pronunciation(s), the issue is that each kanji would still have to be memorized with various potential "pronunciations" that would be applied differently based on the context, not to mention the differences in nuance. Even English, with its complex spelling rules, is somewhat better in this regard because the discrepancies in pronunciation mostly apply to vowels (long and short), although some exceptions exist, such as consonant clusters ("gh" can be pronounced as "f").

In any case, both Chinese and Japanese continued to utilize Chinese characters based on specific historical and phonological conditions, which cannot be applied to Europe without a PoD at least around 2000 BC or so, as a specific culture would have to dominate the region for much longer than either the Greeks or Romans managed to accomplish IOTL.
 
I meant the Korean equivalent of on'yomi, and I'm not sure why or how Korean would use contemporary pronunciations used in Mandarin (or another dialect), given that they are phonologically very different. In any case, on'yomi is much more complicated than the Korean "equivalent," as the former mostly consists of Go-on and Kan-on, along with occasional Tō-on and Kan'yō-on, due to occasional borrowing of terminology for over a millennia while phonological shifts continued to occur in China. On the other hand, the vast majority of hanja only have one Sino-Korean pronunciation mapped onto each character, of which most were loosely adopted around the 7th-8th centuries through Silla's contacts with the Tang, although a minority have been based on earlier or later pronunciations, not to mention that most alternate pronunciations are linked with alternate meanings.

"동사" (動詞-verb) and "동사" (凍死-freeze to death) are indeed pronounced the same way, although they can be distinguished in context, not to mention that both words are rare, as the former would generally be limited to dictionaries, while the latter would probably have limited use outside of newspapers and scientific articles. However, my point was that ambiguity and etymology would only pose as a significant issue when highly specialized terminology is taken into account, as the general populace would use much more native vocabulary (60-80%), while the small proportion of Sino-Korean terms in use would be ubiquitous enough not to warrant hanja. As a result, while the general population can essentially get by without knowing more than the basic hanja, and not using them in writing, individuals who have gone through higher education would certainly be required to know over 2000 characters in order to deduce etymology and reduce ambiguity, which is why they are still taught, while hanja still continues to be used in formal documents.
Thanks, that's a good explanation and now I get why Korean didn't go the "Japanese route".

The biggest issue that I can see with kanji is that many of the characters would have 2-3 pronunciations in on'yomi and 1-2 in kun'yomi, which would mean that a specific character would tend to have around 3-5 different pronunciations, although the entire range would be far larger. While specific words, generally consisting of two characters, would generally have only one (or two) acceptable pronunciation(s), the issue is that each kanji would still have to be memorized with various potential "pronunciations" that would be applied differently based on the context, not to mention the differences in nuance. Even English, with its complex spelling rules, is somewhat better in this regard because the discrepancies in pronunciation mostly apply to vowels (long and short), although some exceptions exist, such as consonant clusters ("gh" can be pronounced as "f").
I'm not fluent in Japanese by any stretch, but I find that many of the "variant" onyomi readings exist for the sake of harmony in pronunciation and as such only differ by whether or not the kana would have two dots on the side (e.g. za vs sa), which means that context helps one deduce the correct variation.

In any case, both Chinese and Japanese continued to utilize Chinese characters based on specific historical and phonological conditions, which cannot be applied to Europe without a PoD at least around 2000 BC or so, as a specific culture would have to dominate the region for much longer than either the Greeks or Romans managed to accomplish IOTL.
So for "European characters" to take root, you would have to start super early? Or just get some empire that uses them to hold onto most of Europe for longer?
 
Thanks, that's a good explanation and now I get why Korean didn't go the "Japanese route".

No problem. Glad that helped.

I'm not fluent in Japanese by any stretch, but I find that many of the "variant" onyomi readings exist for the sake of harmony in pronunciation and as such only differ by whether or not the kana would have two dots on the side (e.g. za vs sa), which means that context helps one deduce the correct variation.

Point taken.

So for "European characters" to take root, you would have to start super early? Or just get some empire that uses them to hold onto most of Europe for longer?

I was focusing on an early PoD in order to significantly reduce or butterfly away the Phoenician alphabet's influence, as it is essentially the ancestor to all of the writing systems used within Europe today, mostly due to the widespread of Greek, then Latin IOTL. However, the bigger challenge is for a large empire holding sway over most of the continent for over a millennia to retain its "logographic" system, instead of eventually deciding to adopt a syllabary, abjad, or an alphabet, as they were collectively prominent in Egypt since around 3000 BC, within Europe since 800 BC through the Greek alphabet, along with the Middle East since 500 BC or so due to the invention of Old Persian cuneiform.
 
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