CJK characters
Chinese is written almost exclusively in Chinese characters. It requires over 3,000 characters for general literacy, but up to 40,000 characters for reasonably complete coverage. Japanese uses fewer characters — general literacy in Japanese can be expected with 1,945 characters. The use of Chinese characters in Korea is becoming increasingly rare, although idiosyncratic use of Chinese characters in proper names requires knowledge (and therefore availability) of many more characters. However, even today, students in South Korea are taught 1,800 characters.
Character amnesia
Chinese characters are a logographic form of writing, where the form of the character is not always directly related to its pronunciation. The characters are composed of a combination of 8–11 standard strokes, over a hundred common radicals, and hundreds of phonetic components. The characters can be very complex and learning them is a highly neuro-muscular task, meaning that it is difficult to remember how to write the characters without repetitive practice in writing them by hand. Scientific studies have also shown that while reading utilizes diverse areas of the brain, reading Chinese makes unique usage of distinct parts of the frontal and temporal areas of the brain associated with motor memory, areas associated with handwriting.