Most of the world’s languages are written alphabetically; in an alphabetic writing system the basic components represent sounds only without any reference to meaning. For example, the letter “b” in ...

Chinese characters are the system of symbols used to write Chinese. Unlike an alphabet, which represents only sounds, each Chinese character has a unique meaning.

Rather than an alphabet, characters are used to represent words in China. Photo taken from BBC In China, it takes blood, sweat and months of studying dictionaries to become a Character Hero.

BBC's Celia Hatton reports from Beijing, and asks whether the Chinese are forgetting how to write their own language. In China, it takes blood, sweat and months of studying dictionaries to become ...

Few things in Chinese culture are more widely misunderstood outside of China than the Chinese language. The Chinese write very differently from us and indeed from all other literate societies in today ...

Chinese, the most commonly spoken language in the world, is challenging to master. Rather than an alphabet, Chinese has thousands of characters. On top of that, the language is tonal, so how you ...

The Chinese language’s lack of an alphabet has been a source of concern. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it meant Chinese typewriting and telegraphy were much slower.