> The written language is almost orthogonal to the spoken one. I'm almost certain that this is true of Chinese script (after all, it was and is used for writin

> The written language is almost orthogonal to the spoken one. I'm almost certain that this is true of Chinese script (after all, it was and is used for writing many languages!), but it might not be deducible based on this sort of experience. I say thus because I had a very similar experience after I had to spend a month in the UAE. Thanks to frequent bilingual signs, I started recognizing common Arabic words, but I had no idea what the words are in Arabic or how to say them. But as far as I know, written Arabic is not at all orthogonal to spoken Arabic, every word is written exactly as it sounds.