The Origins of Ancient Writing and Script

The Latin alphabet was not the first known alphabet of Germanic speaking peoples. The emergence and expansion of Islamic cultures would enable Arabic script to become familiar from northwest Africa right across to the Far East and Southeast Asia. As is the case with Chinese, not every culture has an alphabet. Modern Chinese script has over 3000 glyphs which make up its modern script. Japanese script has been influenced by a variety of local scripts that through the ages this has resulted in a writing system that contains over 50,000 characters. It also presents a problem in the 21st century world of internet communication where it has been necessary to promote the use of Romanised Japanese - written with the Latin alphabet.