> So the spoken language uses Chinese based characters to record the sounds in writing, but it may not necessarily have relation to what the sounds are in Chinese if someone were to read the characters as if Chinese.
Sort of as an example, educated persons in what is now Tajikistan formerly used the arabic/persian derived script. Tajik is mututally intelligible with the Dari spoken in Kabul and is a dialect of Persian. Most of the area was historically part of the greater persian empire at one point in time.
After the Russian influence and Soviet Union grew much stronger, the education system in Tajikistan was forcibly switched to using the cyrillic alphabet to write down the sounds of spoken Tajik Persian.
Now there is a movement to revert to the Farsi writing system as is used in Afghanistan.
Sort of as an example, educated persons in what is now Tajikistan formerly used the arabic/persian derived script. Tajik is mututally intelligible with the Dari spoken in Kabul and is a dialect of Persian. Most of the area was historically part of the greater persian empire at one point in time.
After the Russian influence and Soviet Union grew much stronger, the education system in Tajikistan was forcibly switched to using the cyrillic alphabet to write down the sounds of spoken Tajik Persian.
Now there is a movement to revert to the Farsi writing system as is used in Afghanistan.