jawChinese+writing

=Chinese Writing = The Chinese writing system contains thousands of symbols and characters. To be barely literate, you would need to know over 1,500 characters, and a true scholar would know at least 10,000 characters. This is because each character generally stands for one unit of language. Strangely, the written form of Chinese has almost no links to spoken Chinese. If someone could read Chinese, they may not necessarily know how to speak it. This can be likened to our number system. We see 3+2=5 as, "Three plus two equals five," when in France, it would be read, "Trois et deux font cinq." The advantage to this is that people who spoke different forms of Chinese would be able to communicate through writing. This made control of the land much easier, and helped to unify the people.