Ruben Said:

When words are translated into English from a language with a different writing system...?

We Answered:

But even the individual characters in Chinese or Japanese have a pronunciation. The strange spellings English speakers get comes from the rominization of the pronunciations. Their alphabet may be completely different from the Roman one, but it's still an alphabet. As to why they aren't always phonetic, different languages have different ways of pronouncing the same letter. Even among more closely linked languages such as English and French, an "R" is completely different. Some languages don't have a Roman alphabet equivalent for some "letters" so there's no way they could be true to phonetics.

Daisy Said:

is it possible to type urdu(right to left writing system) and english in computer- if possible explain me how?

We Answered:

It works fine in Office 2003, I tried just now in my PC.

How are you?? ???? ??? How are you

Perry Said:

How do the English and Chinese writing systems differ as codifications of their respective language?

We Answered:

The major difference is that the letters of the alphabet represent units of sound or pronounciation, while the Chinese characters represent units of meaning, with each character representing an entire syllable.

English also has more spaces between the words and more punctuation marks than Chinese. Words made with Roman letters have had spaces between them since the times of the Roman Empire and earlier. In Chinese, generally speaking it takes at least two characters/syllables to make a "word" and there are no spaces between the "words" Moreover, each component of the two-character word has a stand-alone meaning. Exactly where spaces might be inserted between these "words" is a subject that Chinese linguists can debate for hours. Because there is no standard, easy way to do this, it has been impossible for Chinese speakers to switch over to a phonetic script for general use. The pinyin you see written is really only good for indicating how individual words should be pronounced, as a language learning aid. You can't write a whole article or story in it and expect anyone to understand it.

The Chinese way of doing things has two unusual features. One is, ancient texts are written with the same characters as modern ones, so that you can almost read directly what emperors and historians had to say 2000 years ago. English speakers can't do that with Latin and Greek.

Another is, people who pronounced things very differently because they were from different parts of China, could still communicate in writing and share a literary tradition. China's recent switch to simplified characters severs the connection with this tradition.

Claude Said:

Ancient script/writing system? I need to translate this to English.?

We Answered:

Is this cuneiform? If so, maybe if you know the name you can find out how to translate it.

Amy Said:

what is the modern egyptian writing system?

We Answered:

Which century do you live in? lol
Egyptians write in Arabic. Arabic is the official language there : D

Alvin Said:

How Many Writing Systems Do You Know?

We Answered:

Well, um.. Times New Roman... uh... Arial....


Just kidding :)
English et French.

:)