The Cultural Identity Within Asian Writing Systems Essay -- Cultural Id

The Cultural Identity Within Asian Writing Systems The style of Asian writing seems to be completely different from that of the western writing systems. For starters, many western languages are phonetic: words are spelled out with symbols that represent sounds. The way that a word looks has nothing to do with the meaning of the word. On the other hand, the most recognized form of Asian writing, Chinese characters, are completely pictographic. A single character is correlated to one sound or meaning. To convey more complicated meanings, pictographs are either combined into new pictographs, or multiple characters are simply used in succession. The meaning of words is depicted through pictographs, but for the most part, there is no information about their pronunciations. Asian and western languages appear so different because they had evolved in isolation from each other for hundreds of years. However, the evolution of each group of languages is similar. Whether Asian or western, languages borrow from each other and evolve toge ther when they are in close quarters. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are perfect examples of languages that have evolved together because they are spoken in countries that are so close together. Their cultures are also arguably similar when compared to western cultures. All three have used Chinese characters exclusively as their writing system for a period of time and parts of the Korean and Japanese vocabularies are actually derived from Chinese. Up until a few hundred years ago, the three written languages have developed quite closely. But in the present day, the three systems appear to have taken very different evolutionary paths. The Korean language has developed a phonetic alphabet syste... ...se Writing System. 20 July 2001. Kanji Dictionary Publishing Society. 20 Apr. 2004 <http://www.kanji.org/kanji/japanese/writing/outline.htm>. Katsiavriades, Kryss. KryssTal:Language Page. Amazon, Britannica. 20 Apr. 2004 <http://www.krysstal.com/language.html>. Laugk. "Chinese hostages to their writing system: A case for simplification and reform." China Daily 7 Feb. 2004. 20 Apr. 2004 <http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-02/07/content_304083.htm>. Noll, Paul. History of the Chinese Language. 25 Mar. 2004. 20 Apr. 2004 <http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Culture/language-history.html>. Ohak-Yonku. "Formation of Korean Alphabet." Language-Research Sept. 1987: 527-537. "Types of Writing Systems." AncientScripts.com. 20 Apr. 2004 <http://www.ancientscripts.com/ws_types.html>. Usaburo, Shimizu. "Hiragana." Meiroku Zasshi 1800s.