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 ...

Is the Chinese writing system a sufficient reason on its own to guarantee that Mandarin will not become a global language like English? That’s what someone asked me after I discussed the prima facie ...

At this very moment, the words you are reading are entering your mind at the speed of thought. Below your awareness, strings of letters are retrieving words and meanings as effortlessly as oxygen ...

Two books on Chinese writing illustrate how tumultuous technological evolution can be. Every second of every day, someone is typing in Chinese. In a park in Hong Kong, at a desk in Taiwan, in the ...

British literary translator Julia Lovell says the Chinese literary scene is open to foreign influences and interests. British literary translator Julia Lovell had her eureka moment some 15 years ago, ...

As texting and typing on gadgets begin to replace elaborate Chinese writing on paper, more and more Chinese are realizing they suddenly don't remember how to write even a familiar character, the Los ...

BEIJING — Archaeologists say they have discovered a new form of primitive writing in markings on stoneware excavated from a relic site in eastern China dating about 5,000 years back. The inscriptions ...

Zhou Youguang, known as the father of Pinyin for creating the system of Romanized Chinese writing that has become the international standard since its introduction some 60 years ago, died Saturday in ...

BEIJING — Archaeologists say they have discovered some of the world's oldest known primitive writing, dating back 5,000 years, in eastern China, and some of the markings etched on broken axes resemble ...

CHICAGO One of the stars of the Oriental Institute’s new show, “Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond,” is a clay tablet that dates from around 3200 B.C. On it, ...