ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part examines how the Chinese script was borrowed to write Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese. It presents a broad overview at the role of the Chinese writing system in China’s neighboring cultures. A Vietnamese script based on Chinese characters was then developed to represent the Vietnamese vernacular. Having served as the written language for China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam for millennia, Classical Chinese encoded in Chinese characters became the foundation of a common textual tradition in East Asia. Educated Koreans, Japanese, and Vietnamese absorbed Classical Chinese texts and wrote in that style using Chinese characters before their native languages were written down. Chinese characters sometimes represented Chinese morphemes imported into the language, which were almost always monosyllabic, while other times they represented native morphemes, which were typically polysyllabic. Chinese characters have been largely disused in the writing of the other languages.
