Writing Systems of the World | Abjads, Alphabets, Abugidas, Syllabaries & Logosyllabaries

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CREDITS:
Chart: Matt Baker
Script/Narration: Matt Baker
Animation: @AlMuqaddimahYT
Audio Editing: @JackRackam
Intro music: "Lord of the Land" by Kevin MacLeod and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license 4.0. Available from incompetech.com

[@UsefulCharts]

Buy the chart: usefulcharts.com/products/writing-systems-of-the-world

[@mgaming2854]

1,493.65 Indian Rupee is what i need if in india

[@mgaming2854]

i also need Evolution of the Alphabet chart so totalv is2987.3

[@mgaming2854]

another one i need then total is 4480.95

[@mirzo4102]

Can you Talk about the yezidi Alphabet?

[@bztc1234]

are you copyright?

[@taowang9735]

How many letters/syllables/characters? English: 26 French: 26 Germany: 27 Russian: 33 Chinese: Yes

[@gamermapper]

French has 42 letters

[@annettayeung2332]

Green Cappy diacritic is not considered a letter

[@gamermapper]

@@annettayeung2332 on s'en bas lec

[@ikartikthakur]

.. I guess Chinese evolved opposite to other scripts.. Rather than being complex in grammar.. It expanded its characters to satisfy the grammar.

[@ANTSEMUT1]

5,000 common characters and up to 50,000 characters.

[@aroundthefiremedia]

I would love to see a family tree video for languages. Modern languages at the bottom and trace them up as far as we can. That would be very interesting.

[@Crick1952]

I think that's cool because writing has only independently arisen in three places in human history: Mesopotamia, China and Mexico

[@alwinpriven2400]

there are thousands of languages in the world, many of them isolates or barely spoken anymore. there's also not enough research about all of them, but you really tried you might get the afro-asiatic, indo-european, finno-urgic, astronesian, and many other groups that I've forgotten the names of. basically this chart will be really cool but it will need to be quite big because afro-asiatic for example can be traced back 9K years if I recall, while others such as indo-european are more recent.

[@varana]

@@Crick1952 And maybe Egypt, or Egypt instead of Mesopotamia - afaik, a dependency between Sumerian and Egyptian writing has neither been proven nor disproven at this point.

[@SampoPaalanen]

While could be nice to see, the problem I could see if that when it comes to languages there's a lot more assumptions, guess work and alternative theories then there is with royal bloodlines. IIRC there isn't even an universal definition as to what constitutes a language opposed to just being a dialect or slang.

[@ignatiusqi9736]

*writing systems. writing systems are not the same as languages.

[@ezix3753]

I just found out Korean is the easiest writing system to understand between all of East Asian languages

[@user-xp4er3cb2z]

True And hangul history is remarkable

[@gokulpayyanur1839]

It was made that way

[@rudeminnesotan]

You can learn hangul in a day. It's simple memorization. I often tell my students. I can READ it. Doesn't mean I understand it. (I'm an expat English teacher in Korea.)

[@badshah7631]

This comment belongs to me... 🙂

[@krillin3350]

Indian also

[@breensprout]

i'm a native english speaker who can read both cyrillic and hangeul and even though they're both pretty simple alphabets, hangeul was so much easier to learn because you're not having to retrain your brain to recognize familiar letters as having a different sound. when i went to russia it was so hard to stop reading PECTOPAH as peck-toh-pah and start reading it as res-to-ran.

[@DarkOxypPS]

arabic next

[@Lynn-pw9nw]

When I learnt Russian, it was quite easy for me to read words in Russian with English letters- however, it backfired and now sometimes I pronounce H, B, X, Y, P as their Russian counterparts.

[@molarcos]

As a Belarussian & Russian speaker, to me it was easy to start reading letters with Latin sound, even in the 3rd form, when I started learning English.

[@LaurenPebble]

I am totally the same. I also have this problem with numbers. I can read Korean no problem, but if a sentence has a number in it I will say that number in English without even realising.

[@solesurvivor7989]

​@@Lynn-pw9nwI had no issue getting used to that translating Russian heavy metal titles however once I tried to learn some Greek I got some of the Cyrillic letters mixed up with that since I learned that alphabet first

[@user-hb4zz4gh5e]

Hangul was literally designed to be easy to learn, it’s very straightforward

[@hipeople9856]

Writing and memorization, yeah, but pronunciation for me as a native English speaker *nervous laugh* ... I can't for the life of me distinguish the sounds made by certain letters or make the fine changes in pronunciation when I say them ( ㄷ ㄸ and ㅌ, for example).

[@technocracy90]

Because Korean and English are very different languages, let alone the characters. A lot of Koreans also don't get the different between a lot of English phonetics. We have a better luck tho, because English is the dominant language on the planet so we can hear it everywhere. Korean, on the other hand, is not that much prevalent outside of Korea so ... good luck to you!

[@Jonte_P]

@@hipeople9856 How weird, I am A native Swedish speaker, and I have no problems pronouncing the letters that are used in hangul.

[@hipeople9856]

@@Jonte_P It is quite possible that I just suck at pronunciation of any letter. I'm known to always mess up pronunciation of words even in English

[@geoffbannister8373]

@@technocracy90 The difference between 십팔 and...well you know the other one, has given me SO much grief ^^

[@richardhughes7044]

"Pacific Ocean" - all the Cs are pronounced differently...

[@kapybara8079]

The problem here is the English language mate. Not the alphabet

[@stephenwaldron2748]

The feature in English that creates the sound in words like "ocean", "motion" etc. I find really interesting. It's where when you have "s", "t", and (sometimes) "z" sounds followed by "i" (long "e" or latin "i"), and then a "dead" or unstressed vowel "uh"(ə), the "si", "ti" and "zi" sounds become "sh", "ch" and "j" respectively. So in "ocean", it's really "ce" which makes a "si" sound being reduced to "sh".

[@fajriyanuar0601]

I think, when the C meet 'a' and 'u', Consonant and if it in the end of the word will be pronounced as "K" like Can, Count, Class. But if the C meet "i" and "e" will be pronounced as "S". Like a City. And if the C meet "H" will be pronounce as the usual C in other language, ex : cheese.

[@japanpanda2179]

@@stephenwaldron2748 Yeah that's true, then you get words like "luxury" where it's even more complicated: the X is "ks", the U is "yoo", and the "sy" sound becomes "sh" in the way you mentioned, so you end up with either "lukshury", or "lugzhury"

[@nataliaborys1554]

Try polish. If you remember that some pairs of letters make a different sounds together like "sz", "cz", "si", etc., you can basically read 99% of the words. It's not latin alphabet that's the problem, it's english

[@MrPantheraUmbra]

Respect to Korean King who created Korean script! This guy was genious to simplify it. This whole time I thought it was complex as Japanese not to mention, Korean script looks all alike... now I know why it looks all the same and that actually makes it easier. All you need is to memorize 14 + 10 (if I counted correctly) letters to combine them by playing tetris to get desireable combination of sounds.

[@thefoolonthehill8394]

0:14 Introduction 0:49 Alphabets 3:09 Abjads 5:11 Syllabaries 7:08 Logosyllabaries 8:05 Abugidas

[@anthonymarcelino8460]

Thx

[@moekacchi1326]

Japanese is also using Chinese words which they call "Kanji" (Chinese Character) along side those kanas.

[@jlxip]

That's a pretty important point. Most Japanese words use either only kanji or a combination of kanji + okurigana, so it would've been nice if he had made it clear. Even though it appears on the video, it's not given enough attention to it.

[@theharper1]

Wouldn't it be better to describe kana as phonetic writing systems? (And yes, you can't talk about Japanese writing without including all four types; hiragana, katakana, kanji and romaji)

[@ulysseslee9541]

but Japan people also can read Chinese if u write the Chinese with Japanese style :P

[@stanislavkostarnov2157]

@@theharper1 if he started talking about all of the writing systems in Japanese, it would have taken all the video... このヴィデオが日本語についてではありません。仮名を例しか使えなかったよ… but yes, I agree Kana is purely phonetic, in fact it is a rarely good example of a pure syllabary (the minimal distinguishable written unit is exactly 1 syllable, neither more nor less)... the other such, purely phonetical, syllabary-system is used for the Yi language; maybe other unrelated cases exist, can't think of any. my disagreement with him would be about Hangul... I would put it in a totally different category, that of a Phonoglyph (a character, who's elements are describing the method of pronunciation, rather then symbolizing a sound, i.e: front/back/lateral, fricative/stop...[for consonants], length[for vowels]) I also feel slightly chagrined he forgot to mention other, less well known, types of writing system variations... such examples, as those odder systems in which symbols bear no, or nearly no, relation to spoken words & sounds, rather, a single character often representing a whole clause or complex concept. examples like the Runic-Lokadharmish, where a religious sign language is recorded as characters written atop a score, whose horizontal lines marked the direction and body-part preforming the gesture. from the picture icon, I expected a more extensive and thorough list, I hoped for something beyond that which I already knew.

[@theharper1]

@@stanislavkostarnov2157 I guess the disclaimer should be extant writing systems?

[@jimcho9412]

Don't get overwhelmed when you see the Korean alphabet chart. You only need to know 5 basic consonants and 3 vowels. Adding or combine these 8 characters to make other sounds

[@AK-jj1qj]

네, 맞아요!

[@SmileyRamonHappytime]

Exactly! We only need to know ㄱ, ㄴ, ㅁ, ㅅ, and ㅇ to get ㅋ, ㄷ, ㅌ, ㅂ, ㅍ, ㅈ, ㅊ, and ㅎ (ㄹ is one exception, though), and same goes to vowels- add •, ㅡ, and ㅣ well together and you can get all of the others!

[@rowonder3897]

yes! thai is very challenging. But I'm still trying to learn it 😁

[@tofferooni4972]

@@rowonder3897 Oh yeah, even us Thai people struggle with it. When 9-10th graders can’t properly read in their own native language, you know it’s difficult.

[@karthiktirumala1773]

yeah same with Telugu, 57 basic letters but then you have "combo letters" which you add letters together to make a new one. This results in like 250+ letters lol. Edit: So I counted again and it’s like 700 letters…

[@eatntell]

When we talk to people from Asia or the Middle East we must always remember that in order to learn English they had to learn the Latin alphabet too. Respect them.

[@kangzhilou4207]

Latin alphabet is not hard, only 26. The hard part is a foreigner must memorize the spelling & meaning of thousands of combinations of alphabets(i.e. words).

[@kayrakaya4719]

Turkey?

[@silvermeasuringspoons6462]

I would say the grammar are the bicth here. I still can’t understand why we can’t use “5 cat” without S because the number already indicated plural. That’s no point of adding S. And why the difference between 1 and 2 is so important but different in 2 and bajillion don’t.

[@justinzhang9935]

​@@silvermeasuringspoons6462 haha, good pointing out. Even from the computer view instead of natural languages, add the 's' while already stated the number before is just a wasting space of RAM and disk.

[@danieltreshner4955]

@@silvermeasuringspoons6462 If I had to guess, the -s at the end of most plural nouns either resulted from a misspeaking that became so widespread it permeated to modern English, or because that "-s" sound allows one to easily and quickly shape the mouth and tongue into a much wider variety of sounds than dropping the "-s" entirely. As for the difference between 1 and 2, English is much simpler when compared to other languages. After all modern English doesn't even have a dual, trial, or paucal system.

[@paul2958]

Japanese is both a syllabary and a logo-syllabary. It’s a mix between Japanese kana (hiragana/katakana) and kanji. A good amount of kanji came from China, but some were made in japan. Chinese uses strings of their characters together, while Japanese has kanji mixed with kana. 小 means “small” in Japanese as well, one of its readings is “shō,” but in its adjective form, 小さい” “chīsaī,” it’s pronounced “chī.”

[@ky9129]

Korean was designed rather recently with intention to replace difficult Chinese writing system. And it even got a proper documentation. No wonder why it is more logical.

[@questworldmatrix]

Looks like Chinese Zhuyin.

[@ky9129]

@Austin Thekkanath To be fair, they are one of the oldest and you cannot renovate entire writing system in a day. Think about London tube. It's first ever metro but considered terrible nowadays due to its age.

[@user-qh3hv3fv9w]

@@questworldmatrix If you consider the time line Zhuyin looks like Gugyeol(old korean writing system). And Zhuyin is sylabery Hangul is alphabet they are way diffrent.

[@avgvstvs7]

@@ky9129 Turks did this 2 times in history with success.

[@yipingcuiv]

Austin Thekkanath The Chinese writing system is somewhat more independent from pronunciation. It’s easier to keep writing standardized. That was what keeps Chinese as a single language instead of evolve into a family of languages like what happened in Europe. There is also added bonus. For average Chinese, it’s quite easy to read and understand texts form 2000 years ago. Not many Europeans on the other hand, can read Latin these days.

[@user-pb1tl6kk6f]

Fun fact: If you(as a Chinese Characters learner) always forget how to write Chinese Characters, and that frustrated you much The fact is: We (as a native Chinese speaker) also forget how to write Chinese Characters quiet often! EX: 我的舅舅喜歡在客廳吃鳳梨 Eng translation: My uncle likes eating pineapple in the living room Within this very simple sentence, 12 characters, I can't write 5 characters Let me be clear, I can read, speak, understand it. I can type these words on computer easily but I don't remember how to write it on paper with pen I believe there are also quiet many native Chinese speakers can't write above sentence with only paper and pen lol

[@ricorezende]

And the result is that young is giving up on handwriting? If the answer is yes... Even in Portuguese which is a language where words are written quite similar the way they are spoken young people can't write as well... I think it's technology's fault.

[@foreverknight4292]

I don't speak Chinese but as a kid I didn't know how my native language's numbers were like but did with English's, until I moved to a government school I had to learn the numbers lmao

[@stephenwaldron2748]

@GUSTAVO666BR Error1010010101010 oh, that's easy, it's just O--O

[@moondust2365]

@@foreverknight4292 To be fair, 1, 2, and 3 in Chinese is basically Roman numerals flipped horizontally. It's very literal. - would be 1, = (don't have a Chinese keyboard, sorry) is two, and so on. Starting with 4 it gets confusing, sorta.

[@hanneyrito560]

It is easy to write for the mainland Chinese.

[@GoodGoga]

This was eye-opening! Thank you very much! Never in my life could i imagine that in 10 minutes i would be able to understand the mechanics of a dozen languages that usually look like random symbols to me.

[@zephdef1781]

Shouldn't you be making some NLSS compilations? ;)

[@rithvikmuthyalapati9754]

One important note about the abugida system is that you do not need to memorize they symbols for every single constant+vowel pair. The same exact vowel diacritics can be used to attach that vowel to any consonant sound. For example to write ke in Hindi, you would need to add a slanted tick on top of the symbol ka(क) and you get ke(के). To write pe in Hindi, you need to do the exact same thing of adding that slanted tick on top of the symbol, so pa(प) becomes pe(पे).

[@asdkotable]

Cut him some slack, guys, Chinese is hard.

[@abhisheknanda9956]

Tray writing odia or Tamil then

[@horacewonghy]

其實唔難

[@stanislavkostarnov2157]

@2freeIvX it makes sense for a written only language, one which has problems with its pronunciation... (you cannot easily say, this word is pronounce xxxx and means so & so) If you look at Chinese characters internally, there is an (albeit rather inaccurate) logical system... for example, in Taiwanese-Mandarin, each character is clearly divided between a radical (approximation of the words meaning... e.g: a bird, a mode of transport, a food, an instrument, action done with the hand, a force of nature etc) and a phonetic, giving you the approximate reading... knowing both, you can usually figure out the word meant even if you do not know it. (this system became less usable as its symbols were simplified with time, but, became forcibly returned to Taiwanese-Mandarin, which, unlike simplified-Chinese, is the product of a conscious effort to keep the language systematic, even at the cost of greatly increasing symbol complexity...) in short, if your language is stable, you can write it as a set of phonemes(sounds), but if your confidence in how the language is spoken is wanting, you may prefer to put in elements which point directly to the morpheme(unit of meaning) bypassing the difficulty of pronunciation.

[@kaylaho]

@@stanislavkostarnov2157 Good point! Fyi, Hong Kong, Macau & Taiwan also use Traditional Chinese for writing, in Chinese we call it 正體字/繁體字

[@terryfang8087]

2freeIvX It’s more efficient to write and read Chinese than English. Based on life experience, the same content in Chinese takes about 30%-50% less space than that in English. 读写汉字更有效率。生活经验表明，相同内容汉字比英语节省约30%-50%的空间。

[@UsefulCharts]

CORRECTION: The vowels on Shalom should be שָׁלוֹם

[@elizabethstart7466]

I don't want to dis anyone writing style. But practicality and ease of use seem to be Alphabetic.

[@ankavoskuilen1725]

I think the most beautifull are hieroglyphs and I also like the curly forms of arabic. Edit: I suppose everybody thinks their own writingsystem is the most logical but that is because you know it the best.

[@DenisBourveau]

"Russian (Cyrillic)" Angry Bulgarians incoming

[@thatotherguy3348]

latin alphabet most logical because I'm biased.

[@karlmachnow4961]

Abugidas are in my opinion the most fascinating way of writing. Alphabets can be more logical, but often they aren't, English is the best example for that.

[@Brevicauda]

It's so mind-blowing because somehow, I accidentally learned all five-way to write. From Abjads: Arabic (I learned it for at least a decade since I grew up in the Indonesian Muslim community) Alphabet: just like the rest of you, learn it at school Abugidas: Javanese ancient ha-na-cha-ra-ka (Since I am a Javanese tribe) Syllabaries: Korean 안영! (if it still counted, finally learn it for the last three years, cuz I love their movies and dramas) And the last, Logo-Syllabaries: Mandarin (learn it because I have a hard time with the double consonant in the Korean and found apparently, that Mandarin is so much fun! 你好 我是Amy！我很高兴认识你🤗

[@Katerina-kqkq]

“In alphabets a single letter represents a sound” ЯЮЕЁ: huh?

[@md_hyena]

ЬЙЪ: WHA?

[@666fedr]

ЬЪ!

[@julystargaryen9452]

Theoretically yes, but as he mentioned there are exceptions, even in English. It's mostly because languages evolve but ppl conserve their writing so at one point they become different. In the case of ya yu ye and yo these leters are mostly used to indicate that the preceding consonant is palatalised, thus 1 letter = 1 sound. They are used as pure ya yu ye and yo bcs some guy thought thay it was cooler tp write this way than "y" + "a/u/e/o".

[@mihanich]

Cyrillic is thus partially syllabic because Slavs decided to create separate letters for ye, yu and ya (Russians also added a letter for yo) syllables because they're used very often in slavic languages

[@FuelFire]

Also russians using ye for yo:

[@b1n319]

hangul is the most easiest writing system!!! i memorized it in one hour

[@CluelessBerk]

NOW LEARN ITS PRONUNCIATION DEAR

[@Ahrang2019]

"A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days." - That's exactly what King Sejong intended to do!

[@chrischin5454]

Are you here after watching crash landing on you?

[@srahims3218]

Nice joke

[@bulk_manifesto3624]

Good luck on pronunciation and missing/confusing reading rules. Tbh, if not for Japanese kanji, korean is harder than Japanese

[@saqlainsiddiqui7170]

দারুন ভিডিও হয়েছে! It means, "excellent video" It's Bengali script which is an abugida. Really very informative video. Loved it!

[@NoName-sz5lu]

@Mario sylheti? Chittainga bolbo? Ken goror? Gom asona? Ar ghorot aisshu. Baat haiu.

[@Morningstar19916]

@Mario এত দিন পর জানলাম আমরা আবুগীদা তে লিখি ।। Awesome

[@boycottnok1466]

Thik bolechen, apni.

[@TheTNTBox]

Why not Arabic style, like Pakistan?

[@bluefairy7304]

@@TheTNTBox we are Bengali. Bengali is one of the most richest language in the world. Why we will use arabic?

[@justrandomthings709]

Old Filipino Writing or baybayin as we called it here also follows the Abugida system, it's like. Based in Brahmic script as well: ᜑ (ha) ᜑᜒ (he/hi) ᜑᜓ (ho/hu) ᜑ᜔ (h) And it has fewer characters, I think there's only 18 characters in Baybayin.

[@revinhatol]

17 as d and r share the same sound.

[@barbs1853]

17 letters original old baybayin Hanggang sa modern and advance. baybayin (ᜊᜌ̟ᜊᜌ̊ᜈ̟ ) ay parte ng abugidas sa south east asia

[@junkyyard2273]

It's not only Baybayin There's a lot of Old Filipino Writing systems.

[@barbs1853]

@@junkyyard2273 yes true sampu ang old writing system ng bansa natin. Tulad ng mangyan script, basahan script, tagbanwa script baybayin script at iba pa.

[@erikziak1249]

I see big potential in this channel. Finally the YT algorithm seems to kick in.

[@mesopotamiansenpai9091]

I just linked that Korean has this similar trait to Arabic. Almost each letter changes shape or form based on the letter after it. For example [ ب ي ت ] means house each letter on its own. But we write it [ بيت ] Kind of interesting

[@kumarslvr1]

Korean has a lot of similarities to Tamil, in Korean and Tamil, there are over 200 words that are same including words like. Search on youtube so see the link.

[@shaman8375]

@@kumarslvr1 was thinking how according to this video, Korean should fall into syllabic alphabet, same as all the south asian languages.

[@magdymohammed5207]

In Arabic every letter Written is pronounced in a mathematical predictions No exceptions I believe that the phonetics of Arabic is the clearest and most of letters can be traced in all other tongues In a way

[@tescomealdeals4613]

Wow, i am a native English speaker and we have two different ways of writing: manuscript, and cursive. (Cursive used to he more popular up until recently where it is now slowly being phased out). We are currently writing in manuscript btw. But that is similar to cursive in the Latin alphabet, because on its own an s may look normal hut when you connect an s with other letters it changes. The way it changes also depends on the letter it is being placed near, for example, a w would bridge two letters high up while an a would bridge then low. I guess you can see why its being phased out now lmao.

[@mr.alhusaini8250]

The difference between these two is that in arabic, the many forms of a letter are based on where the letter comes in a word ex: بيت let's discuss every letter ب have 4 forms based on where it comes in a word بـ in the beginning / ـبـ in the middle/ ـب at the end / ب alone and separated Same goes for ت and ي While in Hangul is not based on the position but rather the vowel that comes with the letter

[@philipr.8197]

Additional information: Japanese Hiragana and Katakana are originally from Chinese, as modern latin alphabet is developed from Phoenician alphabets. Hiragana is the cursive form of a Chinese character that makes the same sound. For example, Hiragana あ [a] is a cursive form of Chinese character 安 [ān], and か [ka] is a cursive form of Chinese character 加 [jiā]. Katakana is either derived from the radicals of the Chinese characters, or cursive form of Chinese characters that make the same sound, like Hiragana. For example, Katakana シ [shi] is a deformed version of Chinese character 之 [zhī], and Katakana ア [a] is from a radical of a Chinese character 阿 [é], 阝.

[@bryansiew9707]

Actually it is from old writing way of Chinese which is known as 草书(cǎo shū)

[@kentarinko]

The shape of the letters is from ancient Chinese yes. The phonetic concept was from ancient Indian languages. There used to be Chinese Buddhist monks immigrated to Japanese islands like missionary who brought Indian classic texts with them.

[@krisannabad7902]

Shalom

[@jamesthompson7282]

Matt makes terrific videos! Engaging AND a public service. Thanks!

[@unioneness]

Oh wow! Hi, I'm korean and love linguistic and each letter's writing systems. I can speak Korean, English, Japanese and as a beginner Russian, Chinese, Mongolian, Indonesian, Kazakhstan, and studying Koine Greek as well, and I can read Hebrew and Arabic only their letters also. Though I can't understand Hebrew and Arabic, when I taught myself to read them, I just thought all of those 5 each writing systems(Latin, Greek, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic) feel like pretty similar to me. And when I said this to others(random foreigner friends) no one believed me. But then when you explan about 'Abjads', you just showed us here that they came from common origin. And that's why I felt like they are similar and it wasn't hard to me memorizing each of them. And also I have been always so curious about Abugidas' letter systems, Cuz I can't even guess how their reading system and sounds and look just alien and nothing similar to Latin. But now I got know even they are all in same group and how they work. (Well I have tried to learn them by myself few times and then usually couldn't continue long) I'm so excited and thank you, you made things clearer for me like certain things to be more certain, and condensed complicated things into one. I'm very glad you made this video and I discovered it. Lastly, I'm of course glad and proud of Korean writing system is the easiest one. (It's just always we have known and acknowledged ourselves too) thank you. 🤗

[@Demildiel]

I would love to see one with ancient writing systems, including undeciphered ones!

[@ilznidiotic]

Can people PLEASE give this comment some likes?

[@kiddydut]

Ilznidiotic done

[@only_fair23]

I wonder what ancient Maya and the Rapanui scripts were. I believe cuneiform is syllabic.

[@200kolya]

the shape of the korean alphabet is also relevant to the ones with similar sounds. thus makes it easier to memorize

[@arnoldkorok5859]

Gyönyörűen összeszedett videó. Köszönöm szépen!

[@rogerstone3068]

Where else can you find such a collection of comments, providing insights from languages all around the world? The power of the internet is great, and this channel offers it the chance to flourish.

[@jessicas2165]

First impressions for me is, oh, so that's how Korean written works... how wonderfully logical. It's nice to learn a few things about languages today, I'm not sure how much will stick, but I'm glad I saw it at least once.

[@thebravegallade731]

Colours correction: a wise person can learn in a day, a stupid person could in a week (King sejong, the king who was behind the creation of hangul) Its simple and scientific (each consonant represent the part of the throat/mouth that makes the sound) because it was made so recently, in the 14th century.

[@reiriley1780]

Yea, korean symbols are surprisingly easy to learn, but knowing how to read the syllable blocks quickly is a whole other story dhdjd. Like??? 안녕???

[@reiriley1780]

Interceptor Cop it actually is pronounced the same as written, save for a few rules that make it easier to say quicker, such as 국립 would be pronounced 궁닙 instead.

[@maarirs12894]

Devanagari is very similar in system too. But u need training to get the sounds right. But it’s all codified. Very easy.

[@quabledistocficklepo3597]

@@COLOURzen With a tutor. Don't expect to learn it by yourself.

[@gundabalf]

the first letter of the english alphabet is "eyy" and it stands for the sound "aarghh"

[@nofanfelani6924]

English is awesome isn't it?

[@feynstein1004]

That's what happens when your language gets heavily mixed with other languages

[@novvain495]

The vowel letters were all pronounced with long vowels /aː eː iː oː uː yː/,which then broke into dipthongs → /eɪ i aɪ oʊ ju waɪ/. English spelling makes more sense when you detect patterns in it.

[@maximilianopena]

And that's why I'm happy to be a native spanish speaker

[@lordman5497]

@@maximilianopena **smiles in pizzalandese*

[@robertschlesinger1342]

Absolutely superb introduction to the major types of writing systems of the world.

[@alexsorto6183]

Dude, u r a monster (in the good way) your vids are amazingly filled with knowledge. Keep up the good work man!

[@atulgaonkar2230]

"English is bit confusing" 😂 I thought they never knew this.

[@ValeriePallaoro]

We know; we have 'ough' in our words as in though (rhymes with toe). as in through (rhymes with true). as in rough (rhymes with ruffian). as in cough (rhymes with. coffin). as in thought (rhymes with taut). as in bough (rhymes with cow) Enough said!

[@antivalidisme5669]

Love both the logic and the efficiency of Korean. Good old King Sejong! Nice work by the way, very concise. Perfect for an awesome chart indeed.

[@onewxrldmusic7303]

This is a fascinating presentation. I watched this like 6 times to grasp all explanations.

[@Bpapayaboy]

KZbin recommendation suck. It should recommend this channel a long time ago. Such an underrated channel.

[@himangG]

India has 22 official languages, 800 total sub languages

[@srinidhi7140]

ನಮಸ್ಕಾರಗಳು ನಾನು ಕರ್ಣಾಟಕದಿಂದ ಬಂದಿದ್ದೇನೆ

[@joshina4497]

@@srinidhi7140 I have no idea what you wrote there, but it's looking so beautiful

[@supr33]

​@@joshina4497 it says "Hello, I am from Karnataka" in the Kannada script (also I love yoongi's gummy smile 😁)

[@user-mz7bh1eh9v]

ਇਹ ਤੋਂ ਵੀ ਜਾਦਾ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾੰ ਹੋੰਗੇ

[@sinoroman]

tfw most of middle east were arabized

[@voidericspenceracemperor9710]

You learn new things everyday, thanks for teaching me about the Japanese Sylabarries

[@MrRaul8Z]

I like the videos from this guy. Clearly, he is a great educator!

[@danielbosch8811]

This channel is going to be HUGE, i already binged 10 videos and subscribed immediatly

[@johnlacey3857]

Love this stuff! Love it when an expert can distill the basics down to the level that a “layman” can understand.

[@sumneetkaurbamrah1982]

Very informative! Your oratory and research skills are praise-worthy.

[@matthewmcree1992]

Hangul might be the most brilliant writing system ever invented. It's so simple to understand and each character was designed based upon the shape your mouth is supposed to make, plus it doesn't involve many characters in the first place. Now if only Japanese could simplify itself to be less insane and totally complicated. Even written Chinese is simpler to learn according to many polyglots. Written Japanese looks cool as hell, but it makes it impossible to learn for non-native speakers!

[@qingl5148]

the simpler, the less information being delivered. That is why Chinese character nowadays still being attached on South Korean's national ID card and used in Japanese legal provision, which helps to distinguish and clarify difference between people and things. I agree traditional Chinese cannot be easy to be widely learned by many people, but currently simplify Chinese has proved that it can help all Chinese people who born after 1950s getting away from illiteracy, in the meantime, it remains Chinese characters' function.

[@you2be839]

Exactly my thoughts given what I know about it from a western point of view. For me, Japanese is Chinese with an extra added twist on top, and that's why I usually say that the easiest way to learn Japanese is to first learn Chinese: you start with difficult, so that the more difficult becomes slightly easier... and that's Japanese in a nutshell for me!

[@rickmitton6971]

I'm sure it takes a lot more work, but I love the highlighting around each section as you talk about each part. Thanks again for the video!

[@filiushermesio]

PS: Georgian has medieval and ancient scripts as well ( Asomtavruli-ancient one, Nuskhuri- medieval and Mkhedruli -modern)

[@UhtredOfBamburgh]

one of my favourite alphabets and cultures!

[@finrodfelagund8668]

Nuskhuri is also ancient, not medieval (if we start medieval era from the 5th century) and Mkhedruli is medieval not modern

[@ItsMzPhoenix]

I find it cool that Hangul (Korean) follows such a pattern!

[@akshattewari]

वयम् भारतस्यभाषाःगर्वित। हमें अपनी सभी भारतीय भाषाओं पर गर्व है। We're proud of all our Indian languages.

[@shahanshahpolonium]

Jai Hind

[@jijiivisha8843]

🇮🇳❤️

[@Propapanda0213]

Is this Hindi, and the language most Indians use (except Eng)?

[@jijiivisha8843]

@@Propapanda0213 the first sentence is written in Sanskrit language. It is usually written in Devanagiri Script. The second sentence is written in Hindi which is also written in Devanagiri Script. Hindi is spoken by almost 40% Indians. And English is also widely spoken by there are only 10% people (according to most of the sites) who can speak English quite well. English is mostly used with the native language making a portmonteau mixture of it. For example, I'm a Hindi native and all my life I've spoken Hindi+ English more than either of these languages.

[@Propapanda0213]

@@jijiivisha8843 ahhh that’s very informative thank you! I thought Hindi was just another name for Sanskrit haha; so, is Sanskrit also widely spoken? I’m Chinese and I really love the diversity of Indian cultures and peoples :)

[@user-mr3wf3xy4t]

I was learning Korean like a year ago. I learned a little. Then Thai became interesting so I started learning it. *Korean is easier* -I gave up on Thai-

[@ladybeige323]

Psyrorooo right? I had already learned hangeul when I tried to learn thai, and I gave up with the first 2 letters😭

[@user-mr3wf3xy4t]

@@ladybeige323 thai is like effin' easy, to be honest. Like you are chopping soup

[@thastayapongsak4422]

อย่าพึ่งยอมแพ้สิ ภาษาไทยง่ายจะตาย ;)

[@sinoroman]

english -> greek -> hebrew -> arabic -> persian/farsi -> hindi? -> thai (try this learning transition)

[@notavailable403]

I recently started learning Thai (after learning other languages including Korean) and I also thought that the writing system is hard to learn but I'm getting used to it! It's amazing how much/fast you can learn when you're motivated. You can learn reading any language pretty quickly when you just... Read and read a lot :D That's also how i learned reading Hangul. But I heard that Thai doesn't have complicated grammar - there are no verb tenses.

[@fspo1112]

Wow I was literally just looking this up right now after months of not seeing this chart, and you just happened to upload this video an hour ago! :)

[@riverscuomosulista]

I love learning new languages, my father is trying to teach me Italian , love from Brazil 💞

[@AlexTarazona]

Thank You one of the best videos I had seen in long time.

[@lucasan8855]

I'm so happy because I watched the whole video in English and I understood everything he said. Greetings from Brazil 🇧🇷

[@leonardokosta5059]

dá uma sensação boa, né? continue consumindo conteúdos em inglês que a fluência vem naturalmente tô tentando aprender francês, fico vendo jornais o dia todo pra tentar entender

[@lucasan8855]

@@leonardokosta5059 verdade Man, agora tô tentando aprender italiano , tô assistindo vídeos em inglês para aprender essa nova lingua e tá dando super certo kkk

[@chicoti3]

I know exactly the feeling

[@mundiantobachke6151]

A fluência vem conforme você consome conteúdo no idioma que está aprendendo

[@pogeman2345]

As a conlanger, this would be really great to show to a first-timer who's trying to get into making their own conscripts

[@Silkroute]

Thank you Matt ! You have made such inspirational videos showing your quest for knowledge & Truth . Also sharing with rest of of world increases a lot awareness among others . kind Regards Ehsan

[@toribern816]

Glad I found this. Answered like a million questions I’ve always wondered. Thanks. New sub

[@lukeshao1523]

7:29 : Siiiiiaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Me, someone who speaks Chinese: my eaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrssssssssssssssss

[@vladimirdmitrov6678]

Omg same :"

[@mrbilter83]

i suppose it's pronounced "jiaõ"?

[@zxxNikoxxz]

As a Chinese speaker I feel offended. He could have just used a TTS voice.

[@lixixilin]

@@zxxNikoxxz just forgive him lol, mimicking pronunciations isn't quite easy for most people

[@sethhu20]

@@zxxNikoxxz he's forgiven, some chinese syllabus is simply never spoken by anyone before, foreigners rarely pronounce 选 and 全 correctly

[@guindywest3220]

உலகில் உள்ள மொழிகளில் மூத்த மொழி நம் தமிழ் மொழி....வாழ்க தமிழ் வளர்க அதன் புகழ்✌

[@vijayantony6635]

👌

[@edwardcone6860]

Thank you for this very clear and enlightening presentation!

[@regular-joe]

A ton of information organized so elegantly.

[@Daniel-vj9oq]

Historically, ogham was used as a writing system in Ireland. In the made of many dashes and was used to write Old Irish. In UCC in Cork there is a large collection of ogham stones.

[@UsefulCharts]

Ogham is very cool.

[@Daniel-vj9oq]

@@UsefulCharts Though mainly found in Ireland's province of Munster, ogham stones have also been found in Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man and Cornwall. Its cool how we had our own alphabet here in Ireland. 🇮🇪

[@helliswar]

Most love to the irish people from north africa ♥️

[@joanmackie1735]

Thank you for this. I find writing systems fascinating, and I’m waiting for delivery of a book which explains how the ancient Mayan language was decoded.

[@varunyadav9573]

आपने बहुत ही अच्छी वीड़ियो बनाई है। बहत सी नई जानकारियां प्राप्त हुई। मैं यह पांचवे प्रकार की एक भाषा हिन्दी में लिख रहा हूँ। हिन्दी सहित भारत की विभिन्न भाषाओं का जन्म संस्कृत भाषा से हुआ है। धन्यवाद।

[@agytjax]

@8:35 : It is not a "small change". It is a decoration/enrichment to the unqualified consonant. In most cases, the decorative symbol is an appendment to the consonants.

[@deblawson1575]

Thank you I really enjoyed this one, would like more of this if you can no pressure though. I understand how much work goes into this, like I said THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!! May God bless You and Yours Your friend, Deb

[@HebaruSan]

Not only a cool new topic, but also the return of the best voice

[@thomasb7237]

Hiragana and Katakana were developed from simplified versions of Chinese characters that had those sounds to speed up writing. For example か (Hiragana) and カ (Katakana), both pronounced as "ka" were developed from the Chinese character 加, pronounced as "ga" in Cantonese.

[@mohitgrover8889]

Being a language enthusiast, I loved this video. I liked the religious family trees as well 😊

[@aespa690]

Im sorry but I died of laughter when he tried to pronounce 小

[@tcphd2506]

He did admit it sounds "something like"...

[@runningriot7963]

Same with the Japanese lmao! Sounded funny as hell. At least he tried though.

[@tonygilbert5256]

Zeee YAO!

[@cuteworld1637]

Yeah, it would've pronounced Xiao (shao)

[@runningriot7963]

@@cuteworld1637 It had the Pinyin on it. But Chinese is hard to pronounce, especially if you've never studied it.

[@Jitendra_Rawat]

वसुधैव कुटुंबकम, means the whole world is a family, lot's of love from great country BHARAT 🇮🇳🙏

[@Anonymous-qg8nn]

@@2daysago.770 Sanskrit

[@clauaome25]

You explain so wonderfully! Peace to you!

[@UsefulCharts]

Just did a response video to all the comments about Sanskrit: kzbin.info/www/bejne/kHTRlZ6EeL2kq5o

[@elliottprats1910]

Your response video was VERY well done and should clear up 99.99%?of any confusion anyone may have.

[@j000p]

When you say 'indic languages', it means 'the indo aryan languages' or languages that evolved out of Old Indic (Vedic Sanskrit). So, you don't divide the Indian languages of today as North Indic and South Indic, because indic languages are spoken only in the northern part of India. The south Indian languages are called the 'Dravidian languages', as they belong to the Dravidian language family. Also, the rock inscriptions in some of the Dravidian languages are older than the Ashokan edicts, and they were written using a script called the Dravidian Brahmi.

[@halftimelordwizard]

@@kuldeepgaurav1419 yes it does. Sanskrit isn't a writing system, it's a language. Languages can be written in different ways, like how Turkish used to use the Arabic writing system, and now uses the english. The language didn't change, but they way it is written has changed. Sanskrit is older than the script used to write it, sure, but it's not a writing system so it's not relevant

[@jvphilip]

Is there a video on the South Indian languages? There's always a huge dispute between the North and South Indian scholars and people about which is older, richer, authentically Indian etc. Would be interesting to know more about Proto Dravidian, for example and the languages that came from them, as opposed to Sanskrit, and their relationship to the Brahmi script.

[@yogeshpatil5267]

Useful Charts,. HA HAA HAA.DEVNAGRI N BRAHMI MAY INFLUENCE BY ARAMIAC LANGUAGE. BIGGEST LIE .WITHOUT PROOF

[@ClifffSVK]

0:50 "I'm going to start with the category that is most familiar to English speakers - alphabets." "In an alphabet, each letter represents a single sound." English + each letter + single sound LOL

[@FranP25]

One word for the english mercedes

[@EgnachHelton]

Yeah, he really should use Spanish as example.

[@pastellla-ri8471]

Charlie He agree

[@mikicerise6250]

English spelling does make sense, but only if you understand the etymology of all the words, and the hideous Great Vowel Shift. If you know French, Italian, German and Spanish, probably you will find a reasonably close match to English spelling in one of them for any given word - but which one for which word? Unless you are very familiar with European languages, it will look random. ;)

[@Crick1952]

I'd love if you could make a video about various undeciphered scripts like the Harappan script, Rongorongo or Linear A

[@moosesnWoop]

This is someone, who found something to do that is interesting and makes money. Living the dream there Useful Charts.

[@Inkulabi]

Love this, definitely need one of these in a suitcase when travelling the world

[@khageshkumar5569]

😂😂😂😂

[@emmaeasley9190]

I would love to see a collaboration between your channel and native lang to make a chart that shows the evolution of different languages through history, starting with the basic proto languages moving through history to modern languages

[@darthparallax5207]

Same

[@feynstein1004]

Nativlang sucks tho. This video was clear and to the point, unlike his videos.

[@kiw6024]

BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY Other writing system can't do this, a man with hat next to table and chair : 홋 ㅜ ㅟ 😏😏

[@FunnyParadox]

 T _j ...and it was a fail

[@ADeeSHUPA]

@@FunnyParadox ㄱ홋 뷰 뤼

[@netizen8146]

한글 이스 브에리 구드 ㅋㅋㅋ

[@Annyeong1]

긁릵곩 넑넭는 읽런걹돍 몴핡잖앍 엵싥 킹갌한긁

[@kiw6024]

@@Annyeong1 사실 그런 문맥 숨겨놓기는 다른 친구들도 할 수 있어용...

[@shermsquarepants204]

The moment you said : 5:05 "And perhaps the South-Asian scripts", my eyes really went big Thank you for this informative video! It's very interesting and makes me want to dive deeper in my roots and try again to learn the Javanese language and script.

[@vultschlange]

Aku ora isa nulis aksara. Sampeyan saiki wes isa ora? Nuwun

[@shermsquarepants204]

@@vultschlange ora 😭😭😭 I bought a book tho, just gotta learn how to casually write everything together

[@vultschlange]

@@shermsquarepants204 Lol same. My dad got me a Javanese-English dictionary but I still haven't worked on grammar yet. Though considering it's similar enough to Indonesian it would be easier to learn

[@shermsquarepants204]

@@vultschlange Are you able to speak indonesian? Or are you familiar with the grammar?

[@vultschlange]

@@shermsquarepants204 I am Indonesian.

[@UntrainableWizard]

It's interesting to think that so many different ways of mapping sounds, or specific things (kanji, heiroglyphs, etc), have been made. Even before the numerical system was created, there were specific ways to identify how much of something there was. I love this sorta stuff, it's like a man-made evolution of communication that can be passed down to future generations until the surface it's on makes it unrecognisable. They can take stories originally told only through song, dance, or spoken word, to small groups or tribes, and make them near-eternal, like "One Thousand and One Nights", or "Arabian Nights". A compilation book of spoken folk tales from long before the compilation was even considered.

[@alukardio6991]

فيديو رائع! لقد أعجبتني طريقة شرحك للأبجدية! Great video! I really loved how you explained abjads!

[@moonsoul-nightcore8177]

The way he talks is so calming, like, IM LISTENING TO THIS TO SLEEP 😂

[@Kleinerfloter]

Thanks for the enlightenment, professor.

[@WhirlybirdFlyer]

Great video. Interesting to see the different forms of written language. Just a side note, Japanese primarily uses symbols from Chinese in their written language. Hiragana is mainly used for vowel conjugation and particles, and as a teaching aid as they learn the harder Chinese origin characters called Kanji.

[@7azim3]

Actually Arabic has 3 dedicated letters for the vowels: Alif "not same as Hamza", Waw and Yaa', in addition to the short vowles "Harakat".

[@fahadalmutair]

and Korean is more similar to Hebrew than Arabic.

[@HREros]

Actually, alif, waw and yaa arent considered vowels because the "harakat have to be written on top of them for them to make sense. It is just like how the letters W and Y in english aren't really vowels but obviously consonants. Source: Im a native arabic speaker

[@a.maskil9073]

@@fahadalmutair lol what? in what way whatsoever is Hebrew more similar to Korean? Hebrew and Arabic literally have the same letter name origins and same pronunciation for those letters for 75% of the abjad. EDIT: Oh, misunderstood. You mean because of the blocky shape of the characters?

[@ishhurtado6030]

Amazing work and quite helpful to self study historical facts. And certain truths from pas political and governmental decisions.

[@cosmicpri]

thai language and writing is so beautiful. this makes me want to go back to studying

[@sarahsb2237]

Thanks for the clear interpretation.it's very easy to comprehend

[@yvelkram]

Actually, hangul is more hard to makes "table* of it. there isn't "의/ui/" or /w-/ series like 위(wi) in that table, however very commonly used. You could make some table, but It must be 3 dimensional table, for 곰/gom/ thing.

[@terrytang9785]

I certainly think there are many words similar in korean🤔like 오/ 어 ㅈ/ㅊ (i am just a beginner learning korean)

[@yvelkram]

@@terrytang9785 I'm not sure what did you mean, but, yea. most verbs are just two words. that maybe makes you complicate. however, If you write that words as kanji(or hanja), you found difference of it

[@user-vw2mw6xc9n]

I'm a Korean living abroad. One of my friends who started learning Korean kept saying "초장 (a type of sauce)" instead of "저장 (to store)," so I began to ask around these people if they can get the differences among 저장 (jeojang), 조장 (jojang; leader), 주장 (jujang; argue), 추장 (chujang; chief), and 초장 (chojang). No single person correctly distinguished them so far. I'm not so sure about other cultures tho

[@terrytang9785]

@@yvelkram yeah ，I am Chinese， so I do find many words are derived from Chinese or other languages. what I mean is it is really hard to differentiate these similar word/characters.🧐so I am wondering you Koreans really can differentiate these characters (for example 오 /어/우. ㄱ/ㄲ /ㅋ)，or you just guessing it by the context?

[@8607mole]

@@terrytang9785 The examples you mentioned (오/어/우, ㄱ/ㄲ/ㅋ) are 100% able to be differentiate by a native Korean speaker or who is fluent in Korean. There are some cases where modern Korean speakers(as far as I know, it had different sounds in the past but now have been kind of combined) cannot differentiate, like ㅐand ㅔ or maybe ㅙ and ㅞ. I could only think of the aforementioned 2 cases that are not able to be differentiated by just sounds.

[@deadiemeyers1661]

One of your most instructive and interesting videos yet. Thanks for your effort, time, and research in preparing it.

[@awaviarybangalore]

Best educational video on writing systems, I had gone through Omniglot website for language systems learning but couldn't understand so deeply. Short and Helpful video. 👍

[@sksk-bd7yv]

Incredibly well explained and interesting! Cheers!

[@dasigkatama029]

Baybayin, Badlit, Kulitan, Mangyan Philippine Writing System is beautiful and diverse I think it is all Abugida

[@mackymoo1329]

ᜆᜋ ᜃ ᜇ̴ᜒ

[@user-qh3hv3fv9w]

I love bybyin♡♡

[@Galistarwater]

I remembered back in high school, a classmate of mine asked me why Vietnam's writing system doesn't looked like their neighbors, instead has Latin alphabets. Vietnamese's written language used to resemble Chinese, although with some unique Vietnamese characters, called the Nôm script. It wasn't until the 17th century when a French Jesuit named Alexandre de Rhodes arrived in Vietnam and developed a new Latin-based written alphabet. This is why Vietnamese written language to this day looked more Latin instead of something like Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.

[@ilznidiotic]

Note that it was adopted quickly because it was much more reflective of the Vietnamese language than the Chinese syllabary had been (perhaps because the French colonists were more permissive about allowing changes to be made by the native population than the Chinese).

[@xenotypos]

Actually, I noticed Chinese neighbours (Korea, Japan and Vietnam) have always struggled historically with the Chinese writing system, and had to adapt or change it at some point in history. The japanese did it first with their syllabaries (associated with remaining kanjis) but consequently they now have the least efficient writing system of the three countries. Later (16th century) Korea developed a very good alphabet and later again Vietnam adopted an alphabet too, albeit one with latin letters. In the end, Vietnam's writing system may seem different in east-asia, but behind the appearance it's actually closer in concept to the Korean hangul than Japanese or Chinese.

[@ADeeSHUPA]

Dung Bui uP

[@zxxNikoxxz]

@@xenotypos Japanese writing system is unique and special. It is not inefficient. Also they kept kanji for religious reasons since the liturgical text of chinese buddhism are written unsurprisingly in middle chinese (not mandarin). Korea adopted hangul and ditched hanja because of religion as they are the biggest east asian Christian country by percentage. Also Christianism and Hangul are nationalistic symbols.

[@xenotypos]

@@zxxNikoxxz In which way is it efficient? Speaking japanese is relatively accessible but the writing system is hard as fuck and represents alone 80% of the difficulty of the whole language, and japanese high schoolers themselves have a lot of trouble to read texts if there are too many kanjis. Can you imagine that, high schoolers having trouble to read (sometimes). All of this for nothing since romajis would be enough. And imho it doesn't change anything if religion is involved, the result is that Japanese is a weird combinaison of two syllabaries (just one have more chars than the alphabet) and around 3000 "common" kanjis. And regarding Korea, I read something else personally: the chinese writing system was (according to what I read) totally inadapted to the korean language (like the vietnamese language), a lot more complicated than it should, which was a concern. Maybe religion was also involved, but the result is that literacy increased significantly with hangul.

[@user-gb8oz2td9m]

I'm a Japanese.We use kanji,too.When we see one kanji,we have some impressions .So,we can sometimes make out a word that we don't know its meaning.Very useful.

[@JcDizon]

What is the first writing system that Japanese are usually taught in school? Is it Hiragana? I've looked at mangas in Japanese and in some of them, kanji sometimes has a hiragana transliteration beside it.

[@user-gb8oz2td9m]

@@JcDizon Yes.We are taught Hragana and Katakana before taught kanji in school. As Hiragana and Katakana indicate only pronunciation like Alphabet,they are much easier than kanji.Transliterations you looked at are called "yomigana".

[@martin0499]

Phoenician is like an ancient computer which runs most of the internet without us realizing it