system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 - how symbolic languages as Japanese, for example, do to represent new things that never existed before? In latin languages we just use the letters and combine that to form a new word but what about symbolic languages?

I mean this: suppose a new product is launched in a west society and called "rumpa". Will japanese and other countries using symbolic languages like korean and chinese, use the word "rumpa" or create ideograms to say that? If they use the original spelling with our letters how native people that do not know our letters will say that word?
gpt
Chinese is the only major language (or, more accurately, group of languages) that's written purely logographically, i.e. with symbols representing entire words/particles/phrases. Usually they will combine other words to make a new one, such as *diànnǎo* "computer" = "electric" + "brain". Korean is written completely phonetically, so there wouldn't be any issues there. Japanese has three writing systems, two phonetic and one logographic. One of the two phonetic systems, katakana, is used for loanwords for other languages, so that's what they would use.