At first glance, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters may be difficult to tell apart, but there are many differences that can help you. All three of these languages are written in characters unknown to Western readers, but that shouldn't intimidate you. By following these steps you will be able to understand in which language the text you are looking at is.
Steps
Step 1. Look for ovals and headbands
The Korean language uses a phonetic alphabet called Hangul, which is recognizable by the large number of circles, ovals and straight lines (example: 안녕하세요) If the text you are looking at has these characteristic rounded shapes, it is Korean. If not, go to step 2.
Step 2. Look for simple fonts
Japanese writing uses 3 main systems: hiragana, katakana and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are syllabic systems, while kanji are ideograms derived from Chinese ones. Hiragana has smooth lines, but does not have Korean circles (example: さ っ か). Katakana, on the other hand, mainly uses straight or only slightly curved lines, combined in a simple way (example: チ ェ ン ジ). Neither Chinese nor Korean use these two writing systems. Note that Japanese script uses a mixture of hiragana, katakana and kanji in the same text, so if you see hiragana, katakana, or both, it's Japanese. In the following links you can see the complete syllabaries of hiragana and katakana.
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Hiragana
some characters in Hiragana: あ, お, ん, の, か
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Katakana
some characters in Katakana: ア, リ, エ, ガ, ト
Step 3. If you don't see the characteristics of the Korean or Japanese text, then it is probably Chinese
Japanese writing uses complicated characters called hanzi in Chinese, kanji in Japanese, and hanja in Korean. In a Japanese text, these characters are always accompanied by hiragana or katakana. However, if you are faced with a text full of complex hanzi characters, you cannot rule out that it is in Japanese: the names of people or places are often written only with these characters of Chinese origin.
Advice
- Most Chinese characters are quite complicated (for example: 語) and seem more cryptic than syllabic characters such as hiragana or Hangul.
- Korean does not always have circles in the characters. The circle is simply one of their "letters".
- Remember that the Japanese borrowed some Chinese characters, but also remember that if there is hiragana or katakana, it is definitely Japanese.
- In some ancient Korean books there may be some hanja (Chinese hanzi in use at one time), but they are quite rare and still in disuse nowadays. Anyway, if you recognize Hangul, it is Korean.
- Hiragana is softer and more rounded, while katakana is more geometric and simple.
- The Vietnamese language uses the Latin alphabet, so it is easy to distinguish.
- Korean Hangul does not derive from Chinese hanzi, which is why it is quite different from Chinese and Japanese (which instead derives from Chinese).
