Southeast Asia has been a crossroads of the world for millennia. The region was the ancient intersection of the Sinosphere and the Indosphere, and huge areas were subsequently absorbed into the Islamic world in medieval times. Chinese Kanji, Indic Brahi, and Arabic scripts feature beautiful and artistic calligraphy which is deeply woven into religion and culture. The modern era saw European languages introduced by conquest and colonialism. As a result of these intense cultural interactions, an incredible range of written scripts are used across the region.
Kanji
Chinese written language (Kanji) is based on ideograms in which each character represents a separate idea. Characters are complex and represent whole words. There are more than 100,000 characters, though only 4,000 to 5,000 are needed for literacy. Chinese characters are the oldest written language and have been in continuous use for more than 3,200 years.
The use of visual symbols for ideas (words) rather than representations of spoken sounds has had profound implications for culture and history. Spoken language evolves pretty quickly -- think about how differently our kids speak compared to our grandparents. Within a few centuries, old speech sounds archaic. In 1000 years it's almost unintelligible and in 2000 years a language is "dead," often having branched off to form several new languages.
Kanji is not ephemeral like a spoken language! The word symbols have evolved very slowly over millennia but are still very much interpretable by modern Chinese. An average literate person in 2025 is quite capable of reading inscriptions on ancient monuments as if they were newspaper headlines from today. It's as if you or I could, without special training, read texts from Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Kanji is also the basis for some written forms of Korean and Japanese languages, so modern Japanese and Koreans too can read ancient Chinese texts even if they can't understand a word of spoken Mandarin.
The nearly eternal stability of Kanji contributes to a profound stability and conservatism in Chinese culture that is nearly unfathomable to westerners. The reverence for elders and an orderly society espoused by Kong Fu Zhe (Confucius) and the not-exactly-mystical reverence of Taoism that all educated people studied 2000 years ago permeate Chinese culture and thinking today. The dynamic interplay between these very deep roots and the explosive and revolutionary strains of Chinese culture in the past 100 years is one of the most fascinating and powerful forces in our world today.
We won’t be visiting any countries on our voyage where Kanji is widely used, but the ancient ideograms and enduring philosophies they transmit permeate Vietnam and to a lesser extent, other parts of mainland Southeast Asia.
Brahmi Scripts
At least 600 languages are spoken in the larger region! Unlike Chinese, most South Asian languages are members of the Indo-European family and therefore very distant cousins of English, French, German, and other European languages. Dozens of scripts across South and Southeast Asia share distant roots in written Sanskrit.
By contrast with Chinese Kanji, Indic written languages are phonetic and evolved from Brahmi scripts that date back thousands of years to the migration of Aryan peoples with Brahminic traditions from Central Asia in the northwest. The looping curlicues and diacritical marks of these Brahmi scripts are used throughout the "Indosphere," which encompasses most of South and Southeast Asia.
We will encounter Brahmic scripts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, and of course India. These scripts spread across the region in ancient and medieval times along with Hinduism, Buddhism, and other aspects of Indian culture. The literature and art of all of these countries is also deeply influenced by the ancient Brahminic epics Ramayana and Mahabharata.
Brahmi scripts were carried abroad by traders and occasionally invaders from India into both Southeast and Central Asia, ultimately as far as China and even Japan.
Vietnamese
Vietnamese, which is heavily influenced by more than 1000 years of Chinese cultural domination, is written in Latin-based chữ Quốc ngữ . This unique script is a Latin (Western) alphabet that is heavily modified by diacritical marks to express both pronunciation and tones.
Until the Middle Ages, writing in Vietnam used Kanji characters (ideograms). In the 13th Century, a phonetic script called chu Nom was introduced based on spoken Vietnamese.
During the 17th Century, Western missionaries developed chữ Quốc ngữ to represent tonal spoken Vietnamese. French colonial authorities heavily promoted the use of chữ Quốc ngữ and it became dominant in Vietnamese writing during the 20th Century. The script uses a 29-letter alphabet and complex diacritical marks to distinguish among six tones which are critical for understanding word meaning. Spelling is heavily influenced by French, Italian, and Portuguese.
Arabic
Arabic script is used by hundreds of millions of people in a huge number of countries around the world. Arabic is both the written script and spoken pronunciation of the Quran. The language and script spread along with Islam from the Atlantic to the Pacific beginning in the 7th Century.
Islam arrived with Arab traders on the Malabar Coast (Kerala India) by 623 CE, and spread northward from there. Later in the 7th Century, Arabs invaded and conquered the northwest Indian region of Sindh. Many Sanskrit texts were translated into Arabic in the 8th Century. Repeated incursions of Arab and Muslim armies into northern India from the 10th to 12 Centuries led to the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate in 1206. From the 13th to 16th Centuries Indian and Islamic cultures developed powerful synergies. Indian and Islamic culture came under heavy Persian influence during the Mughal Period in the 16th and 17th Centuries.
Arabic language and writing spread rapidly throughout the Indosphere of maritime Southeast Asia — now Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Islam became dominant in that region by the 15th Century, mostly through the influence of maritime trade with India and the Arab World.
The Spice Trade led to centuries of military and cultural conflict in maritime Southeast Asia among indigenous, Arab, Indian, and European powers. During the Colonial Period, the region was successively conquered by Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and British invaders.
For many centuries, the Malay language was written in Malaysia in Jawi, and in Indonesia using Jawa ("Java") both Arabic scripts. Parts of Indonesia rendered Malay languages in a Balineses (Brahmi) script as well. In the Colonial and PostColonial eras this has largely been replaced in Indonesia by standard Latin characters and in Malaysia by the Rumi script, which is also derived from the Latin alphabet.