There are hundreds of scripts and thousands of written languages in the world. Some of them vary greatly in visual characteristics and readability. All writing systems play a vital role for people to learn, communicate and create. Unfortunately, most people haven’t realized that the readability of a writing system correlates with its ability to substantiate science, thus restricting your brain power in sequential processing of visual information.
We proposed five aspects to evaluate the scientific strength of a writing system in the recent article “Scientific strength of writing systems: the aspects”. In this article, we offer analysis of the visual characteristics of some of the main writing systems, in relation to aspects one to four.[1]. They could only be informed, given my limited knowledge of most of them. We focus only on their visual characteristics, without referring to the sounds they can represent.
Let’s start with the complex Chinese characters in the east and end with the simple Latin letters in the west, two extremes among the most widely used. Together, the languages written in their variants cover the vast majority of the world’s population.
1.Chinese
Due to vertical reading, Chinese characters are enclosed in blocks and become internally complex. Complexity is apparently not good for reading, since radicals and strokes are not easily recognized and are often overlooked while reading, although a complex character may appear clear when focused. Consecutive characters are not connected by themselves into larger units, although people intend to use double or multi-character words.
Traditional Chinese has more internal complexity, while Simplified Chinese uses more multi-character words. Both suffer on aspects one through four, with simplified Chinese to a lesser extent.
2.Kana
Kana, with two forms – hiragana and katakana, has its origin in Chinese characters, limiting the number and forming a less complex set of symbols. Still, the symbols retain some trace of Chinese characters, emphasizing internal shapes, neglecting interconnection and differentiation. Strokes are not easily distinguished, reducing clarity and connectivity between symbols. Some strokes are separated, making the symbols less coherent units. The differences between many symbols are subtle.
Both forms suffer in the first through fourth aspects, to a lesser extent than the Chinese. Also, the mix of hiragana, katakana, and kanji in Japanese makes it difficult to read.
3.Korean
Hangul is hailed as efficient and logical. It is faithful in representing speech by using letters to represent phonemes that form blocky characters to represent syllables. The letters are relatively simple, systematizing subcomponents of the characters, a merit compared to traditional Chinese. But the characters still suffer from internal complexity issues. To recognize a character, you must identify several letters and apply artificial rules of their combination. The sequentiality is in doubt. Characters are not supposed to be connected by letters. On the other hand, they are too complex to connect to each other easily.
Consistent internal composition helps improve clarity and distinction between characters, but it’s still not good enough. He also suffers in the first and fourth aspects.
4. Arabic
Modern Arabic script is written from right to left in a cursive style. Many of the letters share similar shapes. Many share a common base form and are distinguished by the number and placement of periods or other small diacritics. Letters that change at different positions actually increase the number of letters, making them more difficult to memorize and recognize. Letters are joined to make words, so it is necessary to work to separate the joined letters while reading. These decrease the legibility of the letters.
It suffers from fewer sequentiality issues, but suffers on the second and third aspects, while the combination of larger/taller and smaller/shorter letters might help on the fourth aspect.
5.Devanagari
The Devanagari script, comprising 47 primary letters, some of which are a bit complex. Horizontal and vertical lines shared by many letters add to the similarity between the letters, although joined horizontal lines help connect the letters. As an alphasyllabary, the script uses diacritics to indicate non-default vowels. That adds another dimension to consonant letters and complicates recognition. The same goes for conjoined consonants. Attention should be paid to various rules and features, which increases the difficulty of reading.
It suffers from some sequencing problem, and also suffers in the second through fourth aspects.
6.cyrillic
The Cyrillic script resembles the Latin script, particularly in its uppercase form. The Cyrillic uppercase and lowercase letterforms are not as differentiated as in the Latin typeface. Many Cyrillic lowercase letters are small capitals. The Cyrillic script has the same level of legibility as the uppercase Latin script.
Modern Cyrillic letters have a simple form with clarity. Most of them are easily distinguishable from the others. Letter shapes are rarely augmented or modified when forming words. Letters are separated within words, while spaces separate words, demonstrating the sequential growth of texts.
It is good in the first to third aspects. But it scores low on the fourth aspect, which is displayed in lowercase letters of the Latin script.
7.latin
This document is written in Latin script. Most of the texts in Latin script are in the diminutive form. There are three segments in lowercase letters: body for all letters, ascending and descending for some. The bodies exhibit roundness characteristics, which facilitate a fluid reading. The ascenders and descenders help to differentiate the letters. Letters with ascenders or descenders combined with those without help create subword units with enhanced recognition, which also make word recognition easier.
Both uppercase and lowercase letters have simple shapes and evenly distributed variations. The distinction between the letters is strong. Lowercase is better for sequential reading, while uppercase is good for emphasis.
The script works well in all four respects, particularly in written English, which rarely employs diacritics and ligatures.
Conclution
The surveyed systems show variations in all four aspects. The Latin alphabet seems strongest among the existing systems, laying the foundations of modern science. This survey is brief, intended to demonstrate our approach and to be a starting point for complex analysis.
It seems that writing systems stronger in these respects generally support more advanced societies, given the right population, publications, and development time. The level of advancement of a society correlates with the level of readability of its writing system(s). The exact connection and mechanism still need further investigation.
Furthermore, it is unknown if in theory there is a totally different and stronger writing system than the Latin alphabet. Will it be invented or evolved from existing ones?
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_alphabets
https://omniglot.com/writing/japanese_hiragana.htm
https://r12a.github.io/scripts/arabic/
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[1] First, the sequentiality; second, clarity of symbols; third, differentiation between symbols; fourth, combination of symbols. The fifth aspect (“other aspects”) is not as essential as the first four.