Writing Systems
The Zhuang languages have been written in the Old Zhuang script, Sawndip, for over a thousand years, and possibly Sawgoek previous to that, which had become lost. The Old Zhuang script, Sawndip, is a Chinese character–based system of writing, similar to Vietnamese chữ nôm: some sawndip logograms were borrowed directly from Han characters, while others were original characters made up from the components of Chinese characters. Sawndip has been used for over one thousand years for various Zhuang languages. It is used for writing songs about every aspect of life, including in more recent times encouraging people to follow official family planning policy.
There has also been the occasional use of pictographic proto-writing, such as in the example at right.
In addition, Standard Zhuang and Bouyei are written in Latin script.
Read more about this topic: Zhuang Languages
Famous quotes containing the words writing and/or systems:
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—Jessamyn West (1902–1984)
“Our little systems have their day;
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—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)