They still do

China used to be dozens of independent states and people's

its an archaic pictographic language

Then the Han happened

A lot to chose from.

not an alphabet

Their own computers don't have all the characters

Nowdays

No, now they have one composite of forty jillion alphabets

it still is

Nuke Chinese save linguistics

@veehro Happy Birthday Vee from the mixed race ethnostate of Paraguay we wish you well

There are kids who taught themselves to read more or less

China would literally be better off using logograms

And yeah it's not as effective as being educated properly

holograms

But you'd be surprised at the gaps the human brain can fill with intuitive learning

what do you mean not as effective?

you cant teach yourself to read without at least learning the phonetic alphabet

Like broken and poor grammar

Awful handwriting

Etc

Bad handwriting is hard to read

Self taught can often result in gaps as well

Still communication though

no, you dont need the phonetic alphabet

It's not standardized or modern

But hey

you need to know the phonetic alphabet to be able to teach yourself to read

just being around people who read stuff and you will pick it up fairly quicklly

Luci seems to think peasants were literally cavemen

at least, i did

no what i mean is

letters are scribbles

unless you know how each one sounds

you literally cannot decipher them

Modern isn't standardized either, one spelling : one word is not a good ratio

Association though

and spelling was very unstandardized back then as well

ah, right, i thought you meant THE phonetic alphabet

there is no association