ABSTRACT
The Chinese written language is the vehicle for one of the world’s richest and oldest cultural traditions. With its combination of antiquity of origin, continuous vitality, and stability of graphic form and orthography, the Chinese writing system has no rival in the modern world. Like our own Roman alphabet, it spread geographically along with the empire that spoke it, and spread to other languages whose people fell under the cultural influence of the empire. It also inspired neighbouring peoples to invent indigenous writing systems that are structurally and visually similar to Chinese.
