Why Are There so Many Different Scripts in East Asia?

You don’t have to learn a new script when you learn Norwegian, Czech, or Portuguese, let alone French, so why does every East Asian language require you to learn a new script as well? In Europe the Roman script of Latin became standard, and it was never seriously challenged by runes or by the Greek, Cyrillic, or Glagolitic (an early Slavic script) alphabets. You still have to learn the Greek alphabet for Greek, or the Cyrillic alphabet for Russian, Bulgarian, and Serbian, but they are the only exceptions. On the other hand, in East Asia today, the logographic script based on the Chinese characters is used in China, while Korean uses the indigenous han’gŭl alphabet, Japanese uses a mixture of Chinese characters and two different syllabaries, Vietnamese uses the roman alphabet, and Mongolian uses the Cyrillic alphabet. (A syllabary is a set of written symbols that each represent a syllable.)

There were even more scripts in earlier times. The Vietnamese used their own indigenous characters known as nôm, the Mongolians used their own vertical script, which was also used by the Manchus in north-east China, the Tanguts in western China invented their own characters, and so did the Khitans in the north-east. So, the first puzzle is the profusion of scripts in East Asia: why are there so many? The second is why none of these scripts actually replaced Chinese characters, at least until modern times. These days, the han’gŭl alphabet is used exclusively, without any Chinese characters, in North Korea, and South Korea is rapidly moving in the same direction; and in Vietnam both Chinese characters and nôm characters have been replaced by an adapted form of the roman script. But before the 20th century every society in East Asia with an indigenous script also used Chinese characters. Sometimes, as in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, the writing system used both Chinese characters and the indigenous script in the same sentence; in other cases, such as Manchu and Tangut, they were kept apart but both were in use. What is the explanation for this state of affairs?

We can start with the assumption that the Chinese characters were the first form of writing known in East Asia. In all societies on the periphery of China therefore, writing was first encountered in the form of Chinese characters and the literary Chinese that they were used to inscribe. Consequently, the earliest texts produced in Vietnam, Japan, and Korea were written using Chinese characters. Local place-names and personal names were written using Chinese characters phonographically, just for their sound alone, and this principle was then taken further, using Chinese characters to inscribe the local vernacular languages. So why...

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips