Alphabet writing is probably the most important invention perhaps even more so than the invention of wheel. It's truly the original "bicycle of the mind".
Syllable based writing are not intuitive for human, Korean found it the hard way by relatively recently by inventing Hangul alphabets despite had been using the Chinese characters for several thousands of years previously with majority of the people remained illiterate.
The low literacy rates in pre-Hangul Korea had less to do with phonological vs. logographic writing systems and more to do with the fact that in Korea at the time Chinese played the role Latin played in medieval Europe: it was the language of scholars and officials, but most ordinary people couldn't read it because, well, they didn't speak Latin. The same thing happened with Hanja in Korea. When you're trying to get people literate in a writing system designed for a language they don't use in daily life, you're fighting an uphill battle from the start.
What is true that unlike the Latin alphabet, which European languages could adopt/adapt for their own use (or think the way Cyrillic was adapted for Mongolian), Chinese characters, being logographic, couldn't simply be repurposed to represent sounds of the Korean tongue — that's why Hangul had to be invented from scratch. That's one important difference between phonological and logographic writing systems, but it has little do with the question which system is better at spreading literacy.
This is anectotal but I've a friend who's well educated senior chip design engineer who's mother tongue Chinese but cannot read the written words since he has no background in Chinese vernacular education where people properly learn the multitudes of Chinese characters.
I know of at least one other instance. But note that the same is true of English speakers. Becoming literate in English isn't just a matter of learning the alphabet (otherwise a Frenchman automatically qualifies as literate in English simply because he knows the English alphabet). The way literacy is typically assessed is by asking you to read a typical paragraph from say a newspaper and then testing you for reading comprehension. Someone whose native tongue is English, but who for whatever reason has never had the primary/secondary education experience typical in an English speaking country is going to encounter the same sort of difficulty becoming literate in English as you friend in becoming literate in Chinese.
By his own account, it took this man [1] 7 years (during his late 40s/early 50s) achieving English literacy, and that happened in a English speaking country where he encounters English texts on a daily basis (I assume your friend lives & works in the West).
When some form of phonetic writing is developed, it's almost invariably syllabic. If anything, the very intuitiveness of syllabaries is why all alphabets, abjads, and abugida originate from a single source while there are many syllabaries that have developed independently.
Further, Hangul is not "syllabic". It's an alphabet. It happens to organise its letters into syllable blocks, but that's it.
That's what I'm saying, after several thousands years of using Chinese characters Korean found that it's not intuitive for literacy hence they invented their very own alphabet, and voila the literacy increased considerably. Actually as a foreigner, you can learn to read Hangul in one single day, and then you can read the Korean for names, sign boards, etc but to understand them is another story. However, if your mother tongue is Korean, you can understand them intuitively. That's the reason I considered alphabet is more important than invention of the wheels and it's truly the original "bicycle of the mind".
Not intuitive? Why would that be?
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary
"Around 1809, impressed by the "talking leaves" of European written languages, Sequoyah began work to create a writing system for the Cherokee language. After attempting to create a character for each word, Sequoyah realized this would be too difficult and eventually created characters to represent syllables. He worked on the syllabary for twelve years before completion and dropped or modified most of the characters he originally created."
"After the syllabary was completed in the early 1820s, it achieved almost instantaneous popularity and spread rapidly throughout Cherokee society. By 1825, the majority of Cherokees could read and write in their newly developed orthography."
They literally achieved higher literacy than the european settlers
> They literally achieved higher literacy than the european settlers
Is there any hard evidence behind that claim? (Not necessarily questioning it, it would just be very fascinating to read it)
Remembered reading it a while ago here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoyah
Second paragraph, with a citation actually (but as always with WP, who knows how much of it is actually in the book)
Syllabaries are more intuitive for humans if anything, because syllables are phonemic units that can be pronounced easily in isolation, which is not the case with standalone consonants.
The genius of Hangul is that it is an alphasyllabary, so it provides the benefits of both - regularity and human friendliness.
Logographic seems fine for the mind? Thinking in speech is the default and most people talk before they read.
Speech is far more like alphabetic writing than it is like logographic writing. Spoken words are not single units, rather they're made up of phonemes.
I am talking about literacy. For reading Chinese newspaper headlines you probably need around 50,000 basic character recognition.
My understanding is that the average Chinese dictionary has 20,000 characters. The full set is somewhere around 50,000. The average educated adult knows about 8000. The number of characters to read a Chinese newspaper is about 2500 to 3500.
This is based on multiple sources online. Here is one example source (BBC): https://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/chinese/real_chinese/mini_gu...
Regardless the number of characters required for understanding the headlines, I think my points are still valid. After several thousands years of using Chinese characters Korean found that it's not intuitive for literacy hence they invented their very own alphabet namely Hangul, and voila the literacy increased considerably.
Fun facts, as a foreigner, you can learn to read Hangul in one single day, and then you can read the Korean written words for names, sign boards, etc but to understand them you need to learn the Korean language. However, if your mother tongue is Korean, you can understand them intuitively. That's the reason I considered alphabet is more important than invention of the wheels and it's truly the original "bicycle of the mind".