Are Language Models Script-Aware?
This study addresses a critical gap in language model research, which has predominantly focused on language selection while overlooking fundamental script-level knowledge, particularly regarding generation in non-target scripts. To bridge this gap, this work shifts the focus toward script recognition and adaptation capabilities by constructing a multilingual test set spanning multiple writing systems. Two complementary experimental paradigms—input adaptation and explicit instruction following—are designed to comparatively evaluate the script-processing proficiency of models across varying scales. The findings demonstrate that these models possess substantial script knowledge, achieving over 98% fidelity in Latin scripts. Moreover, larger models significantly outperform smaller counterparts under non-standard script combinations. By systematically investigating graphical symbol recognition capabilities, this research fills a notable void in the existing literature on the orthographic competencies of large language models.