The language that uses characters rather than an alphabet is Chinese. The written form of Chinese consists of thousands of characters known as "hanzi," each representing a word or a meaningful part of a word, rather than individual sounds as in alphabetical systems. This logographic system is one of the oldest continuously used writing systems in the world. Learning to read and write in Chinese requires memorization of these characters, each with unique pronunciations and meanings, which can vary by dialect. While modern Chinese also incorporates pinyin for phonetic spelling, the character-based system remains central to its written language.