Written Language

Chinese calligraphy is only about ten percent pictorial, meaning the characters are representational and look like something. A typical newspaper might contain 2,000 to 3,000 characters. The characters are part symbol and part phonetic.Tibetan writing uses the Sanskrit alphabet. There are 30 consonants and five vowels. Squiggles aboe and below the characters change the sound. The letters aren't letters like English, but rather short syllables. All the letters/syllables end in an "a."