Japanese language is a popular choice for Westerners as Japan has been a economical superpower in Asia for decades. The language is spoken by 125 million people around the globe and has three writing systems: Kanji (漢字), Hiragana (ひらがな or 平仮名) and Katakana (カタカナ or 片仮名).

While Japanese Kanji closely resembles Traditional Chinese in writing, the Japanese have created their own Kanji over the centuries to fulfill their needs. Hiragana is taught and mostly used by commoners, while Katakana is used for foreign words such as English names or when the word needs to be emphasized.

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Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea, with about 80 million speakers worldwide. For thousands of years, Korean was written in Hanja (or Chinese characters). In the 15th century, Sejong the Great, commissioned the change of the writing system from Hanja to Hangeul (한글).

As of now, Hangeul is widespreaded across the nation and Hanja is mostly found in people's names or names of places and are less commonly used.

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The Chinese language has evolved over the past few millennia to become a complex language of its own kind. With vast landmass, Chinese languages are now divided into eight major dialects and two separate writing systems. The main dialects include Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Hokkien, Hakka, Jianxinese, Hunanese, etc. (see the list of variation of Chinese.) And the two writing systems are Traditional Chinese (as used in Taiwan or Hong Kong) and Simplfied Chinese (as used in mainland China.)

Do you know that the languages used in Chinatown in major western cities are actually Cantonese? This is true but will likely to change follow the returning of Hong Kong to China in 1997.

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