These are logographic writing systems. This means that each symbol represents a word, or part of a word, instead of a sound. The Chinese system has 40 – 50,000 characters and the Japanese system has 18,000, but you need to know only about 2,000 and 1,850 respectively to get by in these languages. In 1966 the Chinese language changed quite dramatically, when books and newspapers were printed with the characters running horizontally from left to right rather than vertically from right to left. There is now a phonetic alphabet known as pin – yin, made up of 25 letters taken from the Roman alphabet. Most Chinese characters are made up of eight basic strokes. These are all in the character for eternity. Words in a Chinese dictionary are in order of the number of strokes they contain. Chinese verbs and adjectives usually contain only one character or syllable, but nouns often consist of two characters or more.
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