The history of three non-Latin based orthographies--Chinese, Japanese, and Korean--is reviewed in this paper. The characteristics of the three orthographies are examined regarding the ease of learning to read with these varied symbol systems. Attention is given to the incidence of reading disability in different orthographies, and research is reviewed concerning the way people process phonetic and nonphonetic systems. It is concluded that the research to date presents more questions than answers to the question of "is it easier to learn to read in an ideographic, syllabic, or alphabetic system?" The existence of linguistic universals across scripts in reading is noted, and research into brain hemispheric capacities regarding the way written language is processed by aphasics in Japan is cited as especially useful to cross-cultural understanding of the process of learning to read. (MKM)