Completely putting aside efficiency and practicality, what do you think is the coolest looking writing system in the world? It can be any language, be it something made up for books, movies, games or TV or some ancient or dead language that few or no one use anymore. A friend of mine thinks that Hebrew and Klingon have the coolest looking writing.

Comic Sans is absolutely the best writing language. It's so unique and original that it practically oozes annoying 12 year olds.

In seriousness I guess Cyrillic is pretty cool.

yoshirulez! : Cyrillic is kinduh interesting. I think Greek looks better, but they share a few character shapes, I think. Personally, I think two of the coolest looking writing systems are Elder Futhark and Tibetan.

Going by literal definition of "cool" as used here? I'd say your choice of Elder Futhark or Japanese (specifically Hiragana and Katakana. I don't think Kanji looks that cool).
Elder Futhark because it just looks like... I don't know really. Lol It just looks cool. Also interesting is that it looks in some ways similar to the English adaptation of the Roman alphabet, which to me is the most sensible and practical of all written languages as character shape and such goes. I mean seriously, all of these jagged edges, sharp curves, lines, dots and dashes, and characters that take three or more strokes? Those are only good for making your written language more confusing and difficult.

Japanese — again, specifically the Kana, as I don't think Kanji is that interesting as far as looks go, though the concept and history are interesting — is cool because it just looks cool. Bonus points for the fact that in Katakana, shi and tsu look like smilies. lol

I'm sure there are more, but that's all I can think of for now. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I've not seen a ton of written languages aside from mine, though I had seen Hebrew prior to this. I just don't like it's appearance at all — too intricate.

I think the Japanese Kanji language looks really cool, and it seems really interesting to learn as well. Like, I don't know a whole lot about it, but most languages I know don't have a system like this. I just can't imagine myself having to learn and memorize a bunch of symbols like that, it seems very difficult, and huge props to whoever can manage to do that.

Lexatom : I thought it was insane that people had to memorize a bare minimum of 1,900 individual characters just to be considered literate, but after researching Kanji a little, I realized it wasn't near as difficult as it seemed. See, each Kanji character is an illustration of a concept and not just random squiggles and lines that are associated with sounds like our writing system is. One of the hardest parts about it, I think, is the fact that there are some abstract interpretations. Most Kanji are made up of "radicals", which can be Kanji on their own. A simple example is the Kanji for person, or the "person radical" 「人」 paired with the Kanji for tree 「木」, becomes the Kanji meaning "to rest" 「休」. A person leaning against a tree, resting. That's a simple one. An example of one that's less obvious would be the human legs radical, which is less literal and represents support or mobility. Putting together the radicals for legs, body and head doesn't mean man, it means foundation. An example of the legs supporting the body. Another one would be human legs under the character for eye, which means to see.

The other hard part about Kanji is the fact that almost all of them have at least two readings, and many of them have even more. Kanji have an On'yomi and a Kun'yomi. The Kun'yomi is the reading used when the Kanji is used by itself and is the native Japanese pronunciation, where the On'yomi is the Japanese equivalent of the Chinese pronunciation and is used when multiple Kanji are put together for words. That's about the end of my knowledge of Kanji, though...

Surprised no one has mentioned this yet at least but as far as looking cool aesthetically goes my vote would definitely go to Hieroglyphics, specifically the ancient Egyptian writing system that I expect most people know at least a little bit about.

 Kanji would be my vote as far as still living widely used languages go since unlike many other writing system it manages to be fairly evocative yet surprisingly practical at the same time in how it functions and how different symbols combine. You would think learning so many different symbols would be extremely hard but it is surprisingly manageable if you expose yourself to them regularly. A close second would be Arabic script which always appealed to me more than Hiragana or Katakana did. Islamic Calligraphy looks really cool and in general I always preferred the more rounded shape of the characters.

I have to retract what I said before: after having some more time with Japanese (I still think the kana looks awesome) I actually do like Kanji now, for many of the same reasons you listed. I mean a logographic (I hope I got that right) writing system is pretty cool, even if it is more than a little impractical. It's kind of neat how once you learn portions of it, you start to see that, rather than reading it as writing, you read it moreso as pictures. It's like using drawings of various images to make books, games, website dialogue, letters, and whatever else.

Do I look forward to learning it? Yes And no. I'm not superhyped to learn it because it's cool (I still think kana looks much cooler. I mean seriously, write a full sentence in kana and take a look at it and tell me that doesn't look cool), but I am superhyped to learn to read it because I will then finally be able to read and play anything in Japanese and fully understand it. Well, once it's coupled with the studies of the language itself, obviously.

But on the whole, I feel like one of the coolest things about Kana and Kanji alike is that it looks so alien and confusing to English speakers who have never learned it, and to be able to look at that and decipher it for myself or others just feels awesome. I've already gotten to do that a few times and it's always a blast. I suppose it feels like I'm learning something far bigger than many other languages where I just rearrange my understanding of how letters are pronounced and stuff, and I'm stepping into another world of language entirely.


So yeah, Japanese -- Kana and Kanji -- is the coolest I've seen. There are a few others I found in my PlayStation 4's language settings that I saw that looked cool, but I have no idea what they were. xD