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I want to understand better the split between logographic and phonemic writing systems. As far as i know logographicnlanguages in the modern world are all asian and of a similar character. So id imagine they all have the same roots.
@freemo Roots of the language and of the writing system are not necessarily the same. There were multiple instances of significant import of "characters" from ~Chinese into Japanese and I had the impression that at least some of them didn't import much past the characters themselves.
Id love to ubderstand how that developed. Importing a writing system but not a language only seems possible at all with logograms which is kinda cool.
Huh? Isn't that the case with all languages that use Latin alphabet but aren't romance?
No, letters arent a writi g system a writing system would be the meaning of the words, the grammer, everything but the sounds.
In logographic languages the same or similar symbol has entierly different spoken words attached to it but the symbol would mean the same.
In a phonographic language that cant be possible since the letters represent soubds so the spoken language is explicitly linked to the written.
Then Japan didn't really acquire the writing system from China. The grammar is iiuc very different, and at some points in history characters were imported for the pronunciation, ignoring their meaning.
@robryk @freemo The grammar is indeed very different, but they imported lots of characters for their meaning but used their own pronunciation. On the other hand, there are different readings and kanji sometimes are used for their original chinese pronunciation. It is said that the Japanese writing system is one of the most complicated ones in existence.
@robryk @freemo It is interesting to note that the common ground in China is their writing system. There are different dialects and different languages across China, but as long as you can read Chinese you can communicate (sadly, I cannot)