Edited by Demonhawk, Sondra C, Sebastian Oliva, Maluniu and 11
others At first glance, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters
may be difficult to tell apart, but there are differences
between each of them that can help you. All three are written
with characters that are unfamiliar to Western readers, but you
do not need to be intimidated by this unfamiliarity. These steps
can help you be a lot more sure which of three you are looking
at. - Most Chinese hanzi are quite complicated (for example: 語)
and look more cryptic than syllabic characters like hiragana or
Hangul - Hiragana are frequently more curvy and without sharp
turns, while Katakana are more straight lined and clean. -
Korean Hangul was not derived from Chinese hanzi, so they tend
to look more different from Chinese writing than Japanese
writing (as the Japanese kana are derived from Chinese
characters). - Vietnamese uses the Latin alphabet, so it's
extremely easy to tell apart. - Remember that Japanese borrows
(and uses) some Chinese characters, b