When most of us think of writing, we picture an alphabet: a small set of symbols, each linked to a sound. English has 26 letters. Hindi uses Devanagari. Arabic has its own script. You learn the letters, blend them to make words, and read. Simple enough.
But Mandarin Chinese and Japanese play by very different rules.
Chinese doesn’t use an alphabet at all. Instead, readers work with characters. Japanese works without an alphabet too, blending characters with symbols that stand for whole sounds rather than letters.
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