Edit: Latin letters and numbers might not be the right word. I meant letters such as AaBbCc and numbers such as 123.
In: 3829
I was in Japan and Taiwan for several weeks and actually asked this question. ( I was asking about signs in general )
The short answer was Arabic/Latin is way easier to read. A lot of the asian characters are very easily mixed up, especially at a distance and if you are trying to read them quickly.
No one uses “Latin” numbers, unless you count Roman numerals.
The numbers that we use in the west are often called Arabic numerals. They were actually developed in India so some call them Indian numerals.
People in the Far East adopted them for the same reason that people in the west adopted them: it’s a better number system than what they were using before.
Because their language does use them.
Numerals and numbers aren’t exactly the same.
One is a number. 1 is the numeral we use to represent that number.
Virtually all languages in the modern day use the same numerals. It’s just kind of necessary for Mathematics and such to be compatible.
South Korea license plates do not use latin letters. They use one syllable (in Korean) followed by numbers. Also, I have no idea where you got the idea that they don’t use the same numbers.
Because In Chinese writing, there aren’t really “alphabet” letters so you would have to use an all numeric license plate using Chinese characters, where the two and three might be confusing to read, or you’d have to incorporate easy to read word-characters.
For numbers, the same reason we use 1 and not one. 2468 is a lot easier to read than “two four six eight” or 二四六七, and they’re used the same in practice. Arabic numerals are universal globally.
For the letters, it’s just easier than trying to use Chinese characters. That one seems weird, but I guess pinyin is accepted enough that people know the characters and it makes sense.
Japan and china uses Arabic numerals in normal language as well, not only for license plates. It’s just easy to use. The whole world adopted Arabic numerals due to the ease of use. That’s also why you don’t see Roman numerals anywhere nowadays
Uh SK uses Arabic numerals… Traditionally yes they do learn Chinese numerals but they’re modern enough to use Arabic numerals on a daily basis now.
Arabic numbers are generally understood universally around the world.
Western cultures had Arabic numbers introduced to them as well. The Ancient Greeks and Ancient Romans had their own number systems like Asian cultures. Fields like math, science and medicine made numbers and measurements more universal.
Elements of the language tend to follow technology or any other cultural trade or cultural phenomenon as it travels around the world.
Many places import Latin letters and Arabic numerals when they bring in technology developed from places which use Latin letters and Arabic numerals. You won’t find them in old ancient cultural texts, practices, etc. However, cars and license plates aren’t part of ancient Chinese or Korean culture. The license plates are one small part of vehicle technology which they imported. Numbers on a keypad, phone, computers, for most mathematics, all use Arabic numbers. Latin letters are peppered throughout general media and used in various ways (ex A, ex B, ex C, etc), but they are widely known for names of companies and organizations (google, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, UN, UNESCO, etc). These are not unknown elements to them, just like western scientists use a lot of foreign terms like Latin in classification systems, etc.
We can ask similar questions like why do we use Roman numerals in our movies, or latin abbreviations for things like pound.
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