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Language Log » Are all writing systems equally easy / hard?
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this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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Linguistics
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The most fascinating thing about the Tangut script is that it was created by a single individual. One man sat down and thought "this is gonna be great!". What an absolute madman.
Similarly, Cherokee syllabary and Hangul for Korean. The former was even created by someone who was himself illiterate!
People often highlight the genius of Sequoyah behind the syllabary, but rarely talk about how much hard labour it involved. This sort of "one symbol per word is too much, I'll need to represent word fragments" insight is not something that comes up naturally, it's clearly the result of trial and error.