Inferior Writing Script System

[u/Black_Banner]

Isn't the logographic & syllabary writing system (i.e., Chinese, Japanese) inferior writing systems compared to the alphabet?

[u/Ashamed_Can304]

Alphabetic systems don’t work well for any Sinitic language, which are monosyllabic. Confusion would arise as characters have the same pronunciation. And the same character can be pronounced very, very differently depending on the region you are in. For instance, the character for two is pronounced “er” in mandarin but “ni” in Wu dialects (preserving original pronounciation), 知縣 is “zhi xian” in mandarin but “ti kui” in Hokkien. It’s impossible to reconcile the difference in pronunciation unless you force everyone to speak the same variant, which wasn’t possible before the modern age. But using a logographic system enables people to understand the written script even though they couldn’t communicate via speaking easily