> The extremely elaborate system dictating which of usually several, often many syllabary characters that sound identical must be used in writing a word in Mand

> The extremely elaborate system dictating which of usually several, often many syllabary characters that sound identical must be used in writing a word in Mandarin (very commonly mistaken for ideographic writing) cannot work for the other sinitic languages. It can work pretty much the same way, Mandarin isn't special in that regard. The only difference is that the conventions for Mandarin are widely known and have been established for a long time. But there was a time when writing in Mandarin was a radical new idea and people were unsure how to write many things, e.g. whether to use 的, 底 or 之 for the genitive particle de. Most Sinitic languages are at a similar stage now: traditionally educated people know the pronunciations of many characters that are used e.g. in Classical Chinese poetry, but some frequently used words may not have any corresponding characters assigned, so people substitute others based on meaning and/or pronunciation, or make up new ones (this is easier when handwriting). Most likely it will also stay that way for most people, since the benefits of literacy in Sinitic languages other than Mandarin aren't all that great, but there are also quite a few enthusiasts trying to make writing their mother tongues a thing, e.g. by developing input methods: https://hanhngiox.net/ https://hanhngiox.net/