Chinese Characters Across AsiaChinese Characters Across Asia

"While other ancient nonalphabetic scripts such as Summerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs are long extinct, Chinese characters, invented over three thousand years ago, are today used by over a billion people to write Chinese and Japanese. In medieval East Asia, the written Classical Chinese language knit the region together in a common intellectual enterprise that encompassed religion, philosophy, historiography, political theory, art, and literature. Literacy in Classical Chinese set the stage for the adaptation of Chinese characters into new ways of writing non-Chinese languages such as Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese. Myths and misunderstandings about Chinese characters abound. Where does this writing system come from? How does it work? How did it come to be used to write non-Chinese languages? And why has it proven so resilient? "Chinese Characters across Asia" addresses these questions by exploring the spread and adaptation of the script across two millenia. Meant for readers with no prior knowledge of Chinese script or Asian languages, it presents a fascinating story that challenges assumptions about speech and writing." -- back cover.