[ww520]

Let me guess. Your native language is phonetic based and is alphabet based, just like English.

[rsuttongee]

I could be wrong, but isn't that the case for most everyone on the planet?

Looking at this map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_system

it seems that with the exception of China, Japan, and Korea (which has very limited use) the whole world uses some form of a phonetic writing system.

[rmah]

The korean writing system, hangul, is phonetic.

[rsuttongee]

Yeah, I know hangul is phonetic, but I've also heard they make use of a variant of chinese characters in some limited fashion (mostly give names, place names, and academic histories).

[Gormo]

So are the hiragana and katakana components of Japanese writing.

[gizmomagico]

And lovely, by the way.