> The most extreme example of this is Japanese Kanji, and while Japanese is its own language, native chinese speakers would note the similarities between it and

> The most extreme example of this is Japanese Kanji, and while Japanese is its own language, native chinese speakers would note the similarities between it and Hainanese/Cantonese dialect, and with some 文言文 knowledge, one can read Japanese without much effort, even if one cannot speak it. This is slightly misleading. Kanji (lit. Hanzi i.e. Chinese character(s)) is the Chinese writing system. The native Chinese speaker observes not any similarities in the languages beyond picking out logograms which are familiar and used in the same way. Of course, there are a large amount of logograms which are not used the same way, on top of the divergence caused by the different simplification schemes used in the two countries, so it is by no means straightforward to read Japanese as a Chinese speaker. The existence of languages as diverse as Turkish, Serbian, Finnish and English all using latin script does not imply that "the written Latin language is flexible". Just as an example, I've taken a paragraph from a recent news article from NHK and converted the kanji to kana. This is of course legible to native Japanese speakers but completely unintelligible to even a scholar in classical Chinese. そうこ から およそ3 キロ はなれた ばしょ に すんで いる と いう60 だい の ふうふ は「 さくや は すごい あめ と かぜ で、 たつまき を しらせる サイレン が なった の で じたく の ちか-しつ に いそいで ひなん した。 とても こわい おもい を した。 こんな ふう に たてもの を はかい する なんて、 ほんとう に ひどい」 と はなして いました。 With the Kanji in place, a Chinese speaker may pick out individual words but the whole sentence would still be unintelligible. As an analogy, I can replace the kanji with roughly equivalent English words, and what an average English speaker gets out of the sentence is what a Chinese speaker gets out of the original. The English speaker doing this should not be under the illusion of "understanding" the language thus. Warehouseからおよそ3キロdistanceれたplaceにliveんでいるという60yearsのcoupleは「lastnightはすごいrainとwindで、tornadoをinformationらせるサイレンがsoundったのでhouseのbasementにhurryいでescapeした。とてもscaryいthinkいをした。こんなwindにbuildingをdestroyするなんて、reallyにひどい」とsayしていました。