Add to this the fact that being literate in Chinese requires memorizing about 4,000 characters and youвЂ™ve got quite a language to learn. This also means that each character has its own pronunciation, and there is no way to guess it. This writing system, in which each character generally represents either a complete one-syllable word or a single-syllable part of a word, is called logo-syllabic. Chinese CharactersД¬hinese characters are symbols that do not comprise an alphabet. In this section, we will look at four East Asian writing systems: Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. But Chinese characters are also used in various forms in Japanese (where they are known as kanji) and Korean ( hanja). Obviously, the Chinese uses Chinese characters (where they are known as hanzi). We will cover Cyrillic, Hebrew and other writing systems in the second part of this post. Taking A Closer Look At Arabic Calligraphy.Understanding The Difference Between Type And Lettering.Brush Lettering: It Only Gets Better After Practice.Japanese, A Beautifully Complex Writing System.You may also want to check out the following Smashing Magazine articles: WeвЂ™ll cover: East Asian writing systems, Arabic and Indic scripts (Brahmic). WeвЂ™ve tried to present at least one special feature of each language from which you can draw inspiration and apply to your own typography work. If you take the time to understand them, youвЂ™ll find that they all give us something special. This may sound tedious and academic, but itвЂ™s not. Today, weвЂ™ll cover five categories of writing systems. Pick any language you like: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, maybe Nepali? Each is based on a different writing system, which makes it interesting to figure out how they work.

The aesthetics and structure of such designs can be strongly related to the shape and legibility of the letterforms, so learning about international writing systems will certainly help you create more attractive and engaging Web designs. While most of us work with the familiar Latin alphabet, international projects usually require quite extensive knowledge about less familiar writing systems from around the world.

Chinese calligraphy font writing