Mr Khan said:
Most languages are. Very few have endured from sufficient antiquity to be considered "pure." Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew might qualify. |
Chinese borrowed some elements from other languages, but not too much. Korean and Japanese on the other hand - borrowed the chinese writing system. I can't speak for Korean, but for Japanese at least the chinese writing system doesn't match. In Chinese every written character is a syllable, in japanese not. In chinese the grammar doesn't change the words itself (suffixes or prefixes). That's why the chinese characters are working. In japanese the words are changed. That's why the japanese writing adds another alphabet for this reason. It looks ugly if you compare texts in japanese with texts in chinese. At least the japanese writing-system is a hell of a bastard.
