Unlike many other Asian languages that are mainly written using an Asian-made writing system, Vietnamese is mainly written using the Latin alphabet, which came from Europe. Before the Vietnamese used the Latin alphabet, they used a writing system based on the Chinese character system called "chữ nôm". Chinese loanwords were written the same as they were in Chinese, but thousands more characters were invented write native Vietnamese words. Due to the amount of time it took to learn the system, the literacy rate in Vietnam was low when this system was used.