The English, Chinese, Korean and Japanese Writing Systems - Essay Example

A syllable is composed of three characters but represents a single character (Rogers 2005). This is contrary to the English writing system in which a syllable is represented by a single character.
The rules of hangul require that each syllabic block consist of at least two letters and a maximum of five letters, and must include at least a vowel and a consonant. These blocks follow a horizontal configuration from left to right or vertical alignment from top to bottom. This is contrary to the English writing system in which block letters would portray an ambiguous meaning. The maximum mathematically possible block in the Korean writing system is 11172 while in the English writing system, the figure can be arranged as long as possible, provided the numeric numbers (0-9) adhere.

The Japanese writing system uses a combination of three scripts the kanji (employs Chinese characters) and the kana (a pair of hiragana and katakana syllables). The two syllables of katana each contain 46 basic characters that total 71 if the diacritics are included. Each of these 46 characters represents a sound in the Japanese language. Most Japanese sentences contain both the kanji and hiragana with only a few exceptions using the katakana. This shows that the sentences written with the Japanese writing system consist of a combination of at least two writing rules (Coulmas 2009). This is far much different from the English language consists mainly of the English alphabet characters. The mixture of these writing scripts and a large amount of kanji characters thus makes writing with the Japanese system more complicated than the simple English writing system.
The Chinese writing system is the hanzi and was adapted to write a number of other languages.

The Chinese characters number in thousands and are the oldest characters that were used in historic texts and paintings. The knowledge of the Chinese writing system involves proficiency in over three thousand characters, which is far above the characters of the English writing system (Coulmas 2009). The country of China, due to the diversity of the characters of writing, has set up a national standard list of characters and pronunciations that are usable. The modern Chinese writing system consists of characters that do not necessarily correspond to the words that they portray but relate to a spoken syllable with a unique meaning. The majority of these words consist of two or more characters. This makes writing in Chinese very complicated compared to the English writing system.
Disadvantages of the Chinese writing system
1. Enormous amounts of symbols and characters need memorization. This is because each word has its own equivalent symbol
2. The complexity of the characters requires a highly literate population for proper communication to prevail. This is expensive economically and requires a number of years of schooling.

However, the Chinese writing system has the only advantage that it is not necessary for a person to know how to pronounce the language represented by the writing system like the English writing system, in order to be able to learn and read the messages written in it.
The English writing system has the advantage of simple characters that are easy to master and write with the only disadvantage in the way certain words are pronounced. Different people, considering the effect of mother tongue influence, may articulate certain words differently.

Conclusion
From the discussions above, it is apparent that the Chinese writing system is the most appropriate system worth considering for a reformation in its structure. The language consists of several characters that are reducible, through a systematic writing rule to make it easy to handle. This would also assist those who speak Chinese to be able to learn both how to pronounce and write the words.
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