Alphabet..

Chinese Alphabet


Since I live in Turkey we use Latin alphabet which is very common through out the world. The chinese alphabet is very different for me. There are shapes and it’s a form of art from my opinion. I wanted to know more about this alphabet since Latin is used worldwide and easier, why do they still use their alphabet?

Chinese alphabet is the longest used alphabet in the world and it has 47,035 characters in it. According to other common alphabets its a lot more characters used. In order to be literate you have to learn three thousand to four thousand characters from those fifty thousand characters; which is still unbelievably many to learn. For just reading the newspapers you need to know at least 3000 characters. Chinese ‘letters’ are representing an idea, a concept or an object where in other alphabets letters by themselves do not mean anything; you have to put together to form a word that means something. Here’s just the very simplified characters of the alphabet;

Actually the earliest know chinese script is the Oracle Bone Scrip and when people started researching it they assumed that every letter symbolized a pictogram. These were found in 1899. Yet theres no clue of how or who have founded this alphabet. There are some theories and myths about the origin but the actual truth is not know.

Also in Chinese alphabet there’s no such things as capital letters. It’s just one size of writing. As I understand from their alphabet they don’t need the increasation of letters to emphasize a word or let the people understand a new sentence is starting; they have so many characters that represent many things and maybe thats why they don’t need capitals.


 There are enormous amount of characters as I said, that made me curious about the computers they use. Actually most of the Western people using Chinese, Korean and Japnese alphabet prefer writing in tablets or pads since it’s easier to write. Other than that they commonly use a specific type of keyboard among many options to choose;