WRITING SYSTEMS
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Topic overview There are two main kinds of writing systems. ·alphabets(字母表) ·pictures Basic information
Alphabet writing systems Some writing systems use alphabets. Alphabet writing systems use letters to tell you what sounds to make. Arabic and English both use an alphabet. There are 26 letters in the English alphabet and 28 letters in the Arabic alphabet. The first alphabet started in the Middle East 3,000 years ago. The English and Arabic alphabets both come from this alphabet. Picture or symbol writing systems Some writing systems use pictures or symbols to show the meaning of words. Picture writing started 5 |
Writing systems and change Languages sometimes change their writing systems. Before 1423, the Korean language used the Chinese picture system. In 1423, the Koreans invented their own alphabet system. Now Korean uses an alphabet system. Turkey also changed its writing system. Before 1928, Turkish used the Arabic alphabet. Today it uses an alphabet like English, but with some extra symbols, like "ş" and "ç". Do you use symbols? Today, in many languages, we use symbols to explain what we mean. For example, many people use symbols like See also: Ancient civilizations: Middle East, China Languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Turkish writing system: the way of writing a language
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000 years ago in the Middle East. Modern Chinese also uses a picture writing system today. Japanese uses some of the symbols from the Chinese picture system. For example, the Chinese word for fish is "yu" and the Japanese word is "sakana", but both languages write it in the same way. There are thousands of symbols in picture writing systems -you have to learn 4,000 symbols to read Chinese.
