List of writing systems
Encyclopedia
This is a list of writing systems (or scripts), classified according to some common distinguishing features.
The usual name of the script is given first; the name of the language(s) in which the script is written follows (in brackets), particularly in the case where the language name differs from the script name. Other informative or qualifying annotations for the script may also be provided.
s representing concepts or ideas, rather than a specific word in a language), and pictographic scripts (in which the graphemes are iconic pictures) are not thought to be able to express all that can be communicated by language, as argued by the linguists John DeFrancis
and J. Marshall Unger
. Essentially, they postulate that no full writing system can be completely pictographic or ideographic; it must be able to refer directly to a language in order to have the full expressive capacity of a language. Unger disputes claims made on behalf of Blissymbols
in his 2004 book Ideogram.
Although a few pictographic or ideographic scripts exist today, there is no single way to read them, because there is no one-to-one correspondence between symbol and language. Hieroglyphs were commonly thought to be ideographic before they were translated, [ and to this day Chinese is often erroneously said to be ideographic. ( Semi-Ideographic? References?)] In some cases of ideographic scripts, only the author of a text can read it with any certainty, and it may be said that they are interpreted rather than read. Such scripts often work best as mnemonic aids for oral texts, or as outlines that will be fleshed out in speech.
There are also symbol systems used to represent things other than language. Some of these are
s (meaningful components of words, as in mean-ing-ful), rather than phonetic elements.
Note that no logographic script is comprised solely of logogram
s. All contain graphemes which represent phonetic (sound-based) elements as well. These phonetic elements may be used on their own (to represent, for example, grammatical inflections or foreign words), or may serve as phonetic complement
s to a logogram (used to specify the sound of a logogram which might otherwise represent more than one word). In the case of Chinese, the phonetic element is built into the logogram itself; in Egyptian and Mayan, many glyphs are purely phonetic, while others function as either logograms or phonetic elements, depending on context. For this reason, many such scripts may be more properly referred to as logosyllabic or complex scripts; the terminology used is largely a product of custom in the field, and is to an extent arbitrary.
, graphemes represent syllable
s or mora
s. (Note that the 19th century term syllabics usually referred to abugida
s rather than true syllabaries.)
for the stop consonant
s and as an alphabet
for the rest of consonants and vowels. The Tartessian or Southwestern script is typologically intermediate between a pure alphabet and the Paleohispanic full semi-syllabaries. Although the letter used to write a stop consonant was determined by the following vowel, as in a full semi-syllabary
, the following vowel was also written, as in an alphabet. Some scholars treat Tartessian as a redundant semi-syllabary, others treat it as a redundant alphabet. Zhuyin is semi-syllabic in a different sense: it transcribes half syllables. That is, it has letters for syllable onsets and rimes
(kan = "k-an") rather than for consonants and vowels (kan = "k-a-n").
s (basic unit of sound) of a language.
Note that there need not be (and rarely is) a one-to-one correspondence between the graphemes of the script and the phonemes of a language. A phoneme may be represented only by some combination or string of graphemes, the same phoneme may be represented by more than one distinct grapheme, the same grapheme may stand for more than one phoneme, or some combination of all of the above.
Segmental scripts may be further divided according to the types of phonemes they typically record:
is a segmental script containing symbols for consonant
s only, or where vowels are optionally written with diacritics ("pointing") or only written word-initially.
contains separate letters (not diacritic
marks) for both consonant
s and vowel
s.
has elements that indicate the components of articulation, such as bilabial consonant
s, fricatives
, or back vowel
s. Scripts differ in how many features they indicate.
s. They are not used for writing per se, but for spelling out words while signing.
, or alphasyllabary, is a segmental script in which vowel
sounds are denoted by diacritical marks or other systematic modification of the consonant
s. Generally, however, if a single letter is understood to have an inherent unwritten vowel, and only vowels other than this are written, then the system is classified as an abugida regardless of whether the vowels look like diacritics or full letters. The vast majority of abugidas are found from India to Southeast Asia and belong historically to the Brāhmī family.
consonant is written with a diacritic. That is, representing [o] with an under-ring, and final [k] with an over-cross, [sok] would written as s̥̽.
, the sound values of the glyphs are known, but the texts still cannot be read because the language is not understood. Several of these systems, such as Epi-Olmec
and Indus
, are claimed to have been deciphered, but these claims have not been confirmed by independent researchers. In many cases it is doubtful that they are actually writing. The Vinča symbols appear to be proto-writing, and quipu
may have recorded only numerical information. There are doubts that Indus
is writing, and the Phaistos Disc
has so little content or context that its nature in undetermined.
.
sound; not to be confused with spelling alphabet
s like the ICAO spelling alphabet.
For example:
The usual name of the script is given first; the name of the language(s) in which the script is written follows (in brackets), particularly in the case where the language name differs from the script name. Other informative or qualifying annotations for the script may also be provided.
Pictographic/ideographic writing systems
Ideographic scripts (in which graphemes are ideogramIdeogram
An ideogram or ideograph is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiarity with prior convention; others convey their meaning through pictorial resemblance to a physical object, and thus may also be referred to as pictograms.Examples of...
s representing concepts or ideas, rather than a specific word in a language), and pictographic scripts (in which the graphemes are iconic pictures) are not thought to be able to express all that can be communicated by language, as argued by the linguists John DeFrancis
John DeFrancis
John DeFrancis was an American linguist, sinologist, author of Chinese language textbooks, lexicographer of Chinese dictionaries, and Professor Emeritus of Chinese Studies at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa....
and J. Marshall Unger
J. Marshall Unger
James Marshall Unger, , is a professor of Japanese at Ohio State University who specializes in historical linguistics and the writing systems of East Asia.- Works :...
. Essentially, they postulate that no full writing system can be completely pictographic or ideographic; it must be able to refer directly to a language in order to have the full expressive capacity of a language. Unger disputes claims made on behalf of Blissymbols
Blissymbols
Blissymbols or Blissymbolics was conceived as an ideographic writing system called Semantography consisting of several hundred basic symbols, each representing a concept, which can be composed together to generate new symbols that represent new concepts...
in his 2004 book Ideogram.
Although a few pictographic or ideographic scripts exist today, there is no single way to read them, because there is no one-to-one correspondence between symbol and language. Hieroglyphs were commonly thought to be ideographic before they were translated, [ and to this day Chinese is often erroneously said to be ideographic. ( Semi-Ideographic? References?)] In some cases of ideographic scripts, only the author of a text can read it with any certainty, and it may be said that they are interpreted rather than read. Such scripts often work best as mnemonic aids for oral texts, or as outlines that will be fleshed out in speech.
- AztecAztec writingAztec or Nahuatl writing is a pictographic and ideographic pre-Columbian writing system used in central Mexico by the Nahua peoples. The majority of the Aztec codices were burned either by Aztec tlatoani , or by Spanish clergy following the conquest of Mesoamerica...
Nahuatl Although some proper nouns have phonetic components. - MixtecMixtec writingMixtec writing originated as a logographic writing system during the Post-Classic period in Mesoamerican history. Records of genealogy, historic events, and myths are found in the pre-Columbian Mixtec codices. The arrival of Europeans in 1520 AD caused changes in form, style, and the function of...
MixtecMixtecan languagesThe Mixtec language, actually multiple languages, belong to Otomanguean language family of Mexico, and are closely related to the Trique and Cuicatec languages. They are spoken by over half a million people. Identifying how many Mixtec languages there are in this complex dialect continuum poses... - DongbaDongba scriptThe Dongba, Tomba or Tompa symbols are a system of pictographic glyphs used by the ²dto¹mba of the Naxi people in southern China. In the Naxi language it is called ²ss ³dgyu 'wood records' or ²lv ³dgyu 'stone records'. They are perhaps a thousand years old. The glyphs may be used as rebuses for...
NaxiNaxi languageNaxi is a Tibeto-Burman language or group of languages spoken by some 310,000 people concentrated in the Lijiang City Yulong Naxi Autonomous County of the province of Yunnan, China. Nakhi is also the name of the ethnic group that speaks it.- Classification :There are at least two Naxi languages...
Although this is often supplemented with syllabic Geba scriptGeba scriptGeba is a syllabic script for the Naxi language. It is called ¹Ggo¹baw in Naxi, adapted as Geba, 哥巴, in Chinese. Some glyphs resemble the Yi script, and some appear to be adaptations of Chinese characters. Geba is only used to transcribe mantras, and there are few texts, though it is sometimes used...
. - Ersu ShābāErsu Shaba scriptThe Ersu Shaba script, also called Ersu Shaba Picture Writing and known in Ersu as , is the writing system used in texts of the indigenous religion of the Ersu people, which is rendered in Chinese as Shābā. These scriptures are recited in divination and when treating the sick...
– ErsuErsu languageErsu is a Qiangic language of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is spoken by about 9,000 people in China. There are three main dialects of Ersu, Eastern Ersu, Central Ersu, and Western Ersu but mutual intelligibility is fading. Some linguists speculate Menia is a dialect of Ersu... - Míkmaq hieroglyphic writing Míkmaq Does have phonetic components, however.
- NsibidiNsibidiNsibidi is a system of symbols indigenous to what is now southeastern Nigeria that is apparently ideographic, though there have been suggestions that it includes logographic elements...
EkoiEkoid languagesThe Ekoid languages are a dialect cluster, such as Ekajuk and Ejagham , spoken principally in southeastern Nigeria and in adjacent regions of Cameroon. They have long been associated with the Bantu languages, without their status being precisely defined...
, Efik/IbibioEfik languageEfik , also known as Riverain Ibibio, is the native language of the Efik people of Nigeria, where it is a national language. It is the official language of the Cross River State in Nigeria.The name Efik is also used for Ibibio-Efik....
, IgboIgbo languageIgbo , or Igbo proper, is a native language of the Igbo people, an ethnic group primarily located in southeastern Nigeria. There are approximately 20 million speakers that are mostly in Nigeria and are primarily of Igbo descent. Igbo is a national language of Nigeria. It is written in the Latin... - TesterianTesterianTesterian is a pictorial writing system that was used until the 19th century to teach Christian doctrine to Indians in Mexico, who were unfamiliar with alphabetic writing systems. Its invention is attributed to Jacobo de Testera, a Franciscan who arrived in Mexico in 1529....
– used for missionary work in Mexico - Other Mesoamerican writing systemsMesoamerican writing systemsMesoamerica, like India, Mesopotamia, China, and Egypt, is one of the few places in the world where writing has developed independently. Mesoamerican scripts deciphered to date are logosyllabic, combining the use of logograms with a syllabary, and they are often called hieroglyphic scripts...
with the exception of Maya HieroglyphsMaya scriptThe Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs or Maya hieroglyphs, is the writing system of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica, presently the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered...
.
There are also symbol systems used to represent things other than language. Some of these are
- BlissymbolsBlissymbolsBlissymbols or Blissymbolics was conceived as an ideographic writing system called Semantography consisting of several hundred basic symbols, each representing a concept, which can be composed together to generate new symbols that represent new concepts...
– A constructed ideographic script used primarily in Augmentative and Alternative CommunicationAugmentative and alternative communicationAugmentative and alternative communication is an umbrella term that encompasses the communication methods used to supplement or replace speech or writing for those with impairments in the production or comprehension of spoken or written language...
(AAC). - iConjiIConjiiConji is a free pictographic communication system based on an open, visual vocabulary of characters with built-in translations for most major languages....
– A constructed ideographic script used primarily in social networking - DanceWritingDanceWritingDanceWriting is a form of dance notation. Developed in 1972 by Valerie Sutton, it is part of a greater body of work called MovementWriting or the International Movement-Writing Alphabet....
- New Epoch Notation Painting
Logographic writing systems
In logographic writing systems, glyphs represent words or morphemeMorpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s (meaningful components of words, as in mean-ing-ful), rather than phonetic elements.
Note that no logographic script is comprised solely of logogram
Logogram
A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are often commonly known also as "ideograms"...
s. All contain graphemes which represent phonetic (sound-based) elements as well. These phonetic elements may be used on their own (to represent, for example, grammatical inflections or foreign words), or may serve as phonetic complement
Phonetic complement
A phonetic complement is a phonetic symbol used to disambiguate word characters that have multiple readings, in mixed logographic-phonetic scripts such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Akkadian cuneiform, Japanese, and Mayan...
s to a logogram (used to specify the sound of a logogram which might otherwise represent more than one word). In the case of Chinese, the phonetic element is built into the logogram itself; in Egyptian and Mayan, many glyphs are purely phonetic, while others function as either logograms or phonetic elements, depending on context. For this reason, many such scripts may be more properly referred to as logosyllabic or complex scripts; the terminology used is largely a product of custom in the field, and is to an extent arbitrary.
Consonant-based logographies
- Hieroglyphic, HieraticHieraticHieratic refers to a cursive writing system that was used in the provenance of the pharaohs in Egypt and Nubia that developed alongside the hieroglyphic system, to which it is intimately related...
, and Demotic writing systems of Ancient EgyptAncient EgyptAncient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
- Egyptian hieroglyphsEgyptian hieroglyphsEgyptian hieroglyphs were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...
- Egyptian hieroglyphs
Syllable-based logographies
- Anatolian hieroglyphs LuwianLuwian languageLuwian is an extinct language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. Luwian is closely related to Hittite, and was among the languages spoken during the second and first millennia BC by population groups in central and western Anatolia and northern Syria...
- CuneiformCuneiform scriptCuneiform script )) is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Emerging in Sumer around the 30th century BC, with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium , cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs...
SumerianSumerian languageSumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...
, AkkadianAkkadian languageAkkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
, other Semitic languagesSemitic languagesThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
, ElamiteElamite languageElamite is an extinct language spoken by the ancient Elamites. Elamite was the primary language in present day Iran from 2800–550 BCE. The last written records in Elamite appear about the time of the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great....
, HittiteHittite languageHittite is the extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, a people who created an empire centred on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia...
, LuwianLuwian languageLuwian is an extinct language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. Luwian is closely related to Hittite, and was among the languages spoken during the second and first millennia BC by population groups in central and western Anatolia and northern Syria...
, HurrianHurrian languageHurrian is a conventional name for the language of the Hurrians , a people who entered northern Mesopotamia around 2300 BC and had mostly vanished by 1000 BC. Hurrian was the language of the Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia, and was likely spoken at least initially in Hurrian settlements in...
, and UrartianUrartian languageUrartian, Vannic, and Chaldean are conventional names for the language spoken by the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom of Urartu that was located in the region of Lake Van, with its capital near the site of the modern town of Van, in the Armenian Highland, modern-day Eastern Anatolia region of... - Chinese characterChinese characterChinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
s (Hanzi) ChineseChinese languageThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
(called KanjiKanjiKanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
), KoreanKorean languageKorean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
(called HanjaHanjaHanja is the Korean name for the Chinese characters hanzi. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation...
), VietnameseVietnamese languageVietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
(called Han tu, obsolete)- Jurchen scriptJurchen scriptJurchen script was the writing system used to write Jurchen language, the language of the Jurchen people who created the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It was derived from the Khitan script, which in turn was derived from Chinese...
JurchenJurchen languageJurchen language is an extinct language. It was spoken by Jurchen people of eastern Manchuria, the creators of the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It is classified as a Southwestern Tungusic language.-Writing:... - Khitan large scriptKhitan large scriptThe Khitan large script was one of two writing systems used for the now-extinct Khitan language. It was used during the 10th-12th centuries by the Khitan people, who had created the Liao Empire in north-eastern China. In addition to the large script, the Khitans simultaneously also used a...
KhitanKhitan languageThe Khitan language is a now-extinct language once spoken by the Khitan people . Khitan is generally deemed to be genetically linked to the Mongolic languages. It was written using two mutually exclusive writing systems known as the Khitan large script and the Khitan small script... - Tangut scriptTangut scriptThe Tangut script was a logographic writing system, used for writing the extinct Tangut language of the Western Xia Dynasty. According to the latest count, 5863 Tangut characters are known, excluding variants...
TangutTangut languageTangut is an ancient northeastern Tibeto-Burman language once spoken in the Western Xia Dynasty, also known as the Tangut Empire. It is classified by some linguists as one of the Qiangic languages, which also include Qiang and rGyalrong, among others... - Zhuang script Zhuang
- Chữ Nôm VietnameseVietnamese languageVietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
(for vernacular Vietnamese, now obsolete)
- Jurchen script
- Eghap (or Bagam) script
- MayanMaya scriptThe Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs or Maya hieroglyphs, is the writing system of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica, presently the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered...
Chorti, Yucatec, and other Classic Maya languageClassic Maya languageThe Classic Maya language is the oldest historically attested member of the Mayan language family. It is the main language documented in the pre-Columbian inscriptions of the Classic Era Maya civilization.- Relationships :...
s - Yi (classical) various Yi/Lolo languagesYi languageNuosu , also known as Northern Yi, Liangshan Yi, and Sichuan Yi, is the prestige language of the Yi people; it has been chosen by the Chinese government as the standard Yi language and, as such, is the only one taught in school, both in its oral and written form...
- Shui script Shui language
Syllabaries
In a syllabarySyllabary
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
, graphemes represent syllable
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
s or mora
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
s. (Note that the 19th century term syllabics usually referred to abugida
Abugida
An abugida , also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit: each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is obligatory but secondary...
s rather than true syllabaries.)
- AfakaAfaka scriptThe Afaka script is a syllabary of 56 letters devised in 1910 for the Ndyuka language, an English-based creole of Surinam. The script is named after its inventor, Afáka Atumisi...
Ndyuka - Alaska scriptYugtun scriptThe Yugtun or Alaska script is a syllabary invented around the year 1900 by Uyaquk to write the Yugtun dialect of Central Alaskan Yup'ik. Uyaquk, who was monolingual in Yup'ik, initially used indigenous pictograms as a form of proto-writing that served as a mnemonic in preaching the Bible...
Central Yup'ikYupik languageThe Yupik languages are the several distinct languages of the several Yupik peoples of western and southcentral Alaska and northeastern Siberia. The Yupik languages differ enough from one another that speakers of different ones cannot understand each other, although they may understand the general... - Cherokee CherokeeCherokee languageCherokee is an Iroquoian language spoken by the Cherokee people which uses a unique syllabary writing system. It is the only Southern Iroquoian language that remains spoken. Cherokee is a polysynthetic language.-North American etymology:...
- CypriotCypriot syllabaryThe Cypriot syllabary is a syllabic script used in Iron Age Cyprus, from ca. the 11th to the 4th centuries BCE, when it was replaced by the Greek alphabet. A pioneer of that change was king Evagoras of Salamis...
Mycenean GreekMycenaean languageMycenaean Greek is the most ancient attested form of the Greek language, spoken on the Greek mainland, Crete and Cyprus in the 16th to 12th centuries BC, before the hypothesised Dorian invasion which was often cited as the terminus post quem for the coming of the Greek language to Greece... - GebaGeba scriptGeba is a syllabic script for the Naxi language. It is called ¹Ggo¹baw in Naxi, adapted as Geba, 哥巴, in Chinese. Some glyphs resemble the Yi script, and some appear to be adaptations of Chinese characters. Geba is only used to transcribe mantras, and there are few texts, though it is sometimes used...
NaxiNaxi languageNaxi is a Tibeto-Burman language or group of languages spoken by some 310,000 people concentrated in the Lijiang City Yulong Naxi Autonomous County of the province of Yunnan, China. Nakhi is also the name of the ethnic group that speaks it.- Classification :There are at least two Naxi languages... - KanaKanaKana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
- HiraganaHiraganais a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
- KatakanaKatakanais a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
- Man'yōgana
- Hiragana
- KikakuiKikakuiThe Mende script or Kikakui, is a syllabary used for writing the Mende language of Sierra Leone.- History :It was devised by Mohammed Turay , an Islamic scholar, at a town called Maka . One of Turay's Koranic students was a young man named Kisimi Kamara. Kamara was the grandson of Turay's sister...
– MendeMende languageMende is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia. It is spoken by the Mende people and by other ethnic groups as a regional lingua franca in southern Sierra Leone.... - KpelleKpelle syllabaryThe Kpelle syllabary was invented circa 1935 by Chief Gbili of Sanoyie, Liberia. It was intended for writing the Kpelle language, a member of the Mande group of Niger-Congo languages spoken by about 490,000 people in Liberia and around 300,000 people in Guinea....
KpelleKpelle languageThe Kpelle language is spoken by the Kpelle people and is part of the Mande family of languages. Guinean Kpelle [gkp] , spoken by half a million people, concentrated primarily, but not exclusively, in the forest regions of Guinea, whose capital, Nzérékoré, is the third largest city in Guinea and... - Linear BLinear BLinear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization...
Mycenean GreekMycenaean languageMycenaean Greek is the most ancient attested form of the Greek language, spoken on the Greek mainland, Crete and Cyprus in the 16th to 12th centuries BC, before the hypothesised Dorian invasion which was often cited as the terminus post quem for the coming of the Greek language to Greece... - Nü ShuNü ShuNüshu , is a syllabic script, a simplification of Chinese characters that was used exclusively among women in Jiangyong County in Hunan province of southern China.-Language:...
ChineseChinese languageThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages... - Vai VaiVai languageThe Vai language, alternately called Vy or Gallinas, is a Mande language, spoken by roughly 104,000 in Liberia and by smaller populations, some 15,500, in Sierra Leone. It is noteworthy for being one of the few sub-Saharan African languages to have a writing system that is not based on the Latin...
- WoleaianWoleaian scriptThe Woleai or Caroline Island script, thought to have been a syllabary, was a partially Latin-based script indigenous to Woleai Atoll and nearby islands of Micronesia and used to write the Woleaian language until the mid 20th century...
Woleaian (a likely syllabary) - Yi (modern) various Yi/Lolo languagesYi languageNuosu , also known as Northern Yi, Liangshan Yi, and Sichuan Yi, is the prestige language of the Yi people; it has been chosen by the Chinese government as the standard Yi language and, as such, is the only one taught in school, both in its oral and written form...
Semi-syllabaries: Partly syllabic, partly alphabetic scripts
In most of these systems, some consonant-vowel combinations are written as syllables, but others are written as consonant plus vowel. In the case of Old Persian, all vowels were written regardless, so it was effectively a true alphabet despite its syllabic component. In Japanese a similar system plays a minor role in foreign borrowings; for example, [tu] is written [to]+[u], and [ti] as [te]+[i]. Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries behaved as a syllabarySyllabary
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
for the stop consonant
Stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
s and as an alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
for the rest of consonants and vowels. The Tartessian or Southwestern script is typologically intermediate between a pure alphabet and the Paleohispanic full semi-syllabaries. Although the letter used to write a stop consonant was determined by the following vowel, as in a full semi-syllabary
Semi-syllabary
A semi-syllabary is a writing system that behaves partly as an alphabet and partly as a syllabary. The term has traditionally been extended to abugidas, but for the purposes of this article it will be restricted to scripts where some letters are alphabetic and others are syllabic.-Iberian...
, the following vowel was also written, as in an alphabet. Some scholars treat Tartessian as a redundant semi-syllabary, others treat it as a redundant alphabet. Zhuyin is semi-syllabic in a different sense: it transcribes half syllables. That is, it has letters for syllable onsets and rimes
Syllable rime
In the study of phonology in linguistics, the rime or rhyme of a syllable consists of a nucleus and an optional coda. It is the part of the syllable used in poetic rhyme, and the part that is lengthened or stressed when a person elongates or stresses a word in speech.The rime is usually the...
(kan = "k-an") rather than for consonants and vowels (kan = "k-a-n").
- Paleohispanic semi-sillabariesPaleohispanic scriptsThe Paleohispanic scripts are the writing systems created in the Iberian peninsula before the Latin alphabet became the dominant script...
Paleohispanic languagesPaleohispanic languagesThe Paleohispanic languages were the languages of the pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula, excluding languages of foreign colonies, such as Greek in Emporion and Phoenician in Qart Hadast...
- Tartessian or Southwestern script Tartessian or Southwestern languageTartessian languageThe Tartessian language is the extinct Paleohispanic language of inscriptions in the Southwestern script found in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula: mainly in the south of Portugal , but also in Spain . There are 95 of these inscriptions with the longest having 82 readable signs...
- Southeastern Iberian scriptSoutheastern Iberian scriptThe southeastern Iberian script, also known as Meridional Iberian, was one of the means of written expression of the Iberian language, which was written mainly in the northeastern Iberian script and residually by the Greco-Iberian alphabet...
Iberian languageIberian languageThe Iberian language was the language of a people identified by Greek and Roman sources who lived in the eastern and southeastern regions of the Iberian peninsula. The ancient Iberians can be identified as a rather nebulous local culture between the 7th and 1st century BC... - Northeastern Iberian scriptNortheastern Iberian scriptThe northeastern Iberian script is also known as Levantine Iberian or Iberian, because it is the Iberian script that was most frequently used, and was the main means of written expression of the Iberian language. The language is also expressed by the southeastern Iberian script and by the...
Iberian languageIberian languageThe Iberian language was the language of a people identified by Greek and Roman sources who lived in the eastern and southeastern regions of the Iberian peninsula. The ancient Iberians can be identified as a rather nebulous local culture between the 7th and 1st century BC... - Celtiberian scriptCeltiberian scriptThe Celtiberian script is a paleohispanic script that was the main means of written expression of the Celtiberian language, an extinct Continental Celtic language, also expressed in Latin alphabet...
Celtiberian languageCeltiberian languageCeltiberian is an extinct Indo-European language of the Celtic branch spoken by the Celtiberians in an area of the Iberian Peninsula lyingbetween the headwaters of the Duero, Tajo, Júcar and Turia rivers and the Ebro river...
- Tartessian or Southwestern script Tartessian or Southwestern language
- Old Persian CuneiformOld Persian cuneiform scriptOld Persian cuneiform is a semi-alphabetic cuneiform script that was the primary script for the Old Persian language. Texts written in this cuneiform were found in Persepolis, Susa, Hamadan, Armenia, and along the Suez Canal. They were mostly inscriptions from the time period of Darius the Great...
Old PersianOld Persian languageThe Old Persian language is one of the two directly attested Old Iranian languages . Old Persian appears primarily in the inscriptions, clay tablets, and seals of the Achaemenid era... - Zhuyin fuhaoBopomofoZhuyin fuhao , often abbreviated as zhuyin and colloquially called bopomofo, was introduced in the 1910s as the first official phonetic system for transcribing Chinese, especially Mandarin....
phonetic script for Chinese languages, and principal script for several Formosan languagesFormosan languagesThe Formosan languages are the languages of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan. Taiwanese aborigines currently comprise about 2% of the island's population. However, far fewer can still speak their ancestral language, after centuries of language shift...
.
- EskayanEskayanEskayan is the language of the Eskaya cultural minority of Bohol, an island province of the Philippines. Relatively little is known about this speech variety which has been the object of occasional media attention in the Philippines since the 1980s...
BoholBoholBohol is an island province of the Philippines located in the Central Visayas region, consisting of Bohol Island and 75 minor surrounding islands. Its capital is Tagbilaran City. With a land area of and a coastline long, Bohol is the tenth largest island of the Philippines...
, PhilippinesPhilippinesThe Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
(a syllabary apparently based on an alphabet; some alphabetic characteristics remain)
- Bamum scriptBamum scriptThe Bamum scripts are an evolutionary series of six scripts created for the Bamum language by King Njoya of Cameroon at the turn of the 20th century...
BamumBamum languageBamum , or in its French spelling Bamoun, is one of the Benue–Congo languages of Cameroon, with approximately a quarter million speakers. The language is well-known for its original script developed by King Njoya and his palace circle around 1895...
(a defective syllabary, with alphabetic principles used to fill the gaps)
Segmental scripts
A segmental script has graphemes which represent the phonemePhoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s (basic unit of sound) of a language.
Note that there need not be (and rarely is) a one-to-one correspondence between the graphemes of the script and the phonemes of a language. A phoneme may be represented only by some combination or string of graphemes, the same phoneme may be represented by more than one distinct grapheme, the same grapheme may stand for more than one phoneme, or some combination of all of the above.
Segmental scripts may be further divided according to the types of phonemes they typically record:
Abjads
An abjadAbjad
An abjad is a type of writing system in which each symbol always or usually stands for a consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate vowel....
is a segmental script containing symbols for consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
s only, or where vowels are optionally written with diacritics ("pointing") or only written word-initially.
- AramaicAramaic alphabetThe Aramaic alphabet is adapted from the Phoenician alphabet and became distinctive from it by the 8th century BC. The letters all represent consonants, some of which are matres lectionis, which also indicate long vowels....
- ArabicArabic alphabetThe Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...
ArabicArabic languageArabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Azeri, PunjabiPunjabi languagePunjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region . For Sikhs, the Punjabi language stands as the official language in which all ceremonies take place. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language...
, Baluchi, KashmiriKashmiri languageKashmiri is a language from the Dardic sub-group and it is spoken primarily in the Kashmir Valley, in Jammu and Kashmir. There are approximately 5,554,496 speakers in Jammu and Kashmir, according to the Census of 2001. Most of the 105,000 speakers or so in Pakistan are émigrés from the Kashmir...
, Pashto, PersianPersian languagePersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, KurdishKurdish languageKurdish is a dialect continuum spoken by the Kurds in western Asia. It is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of Indo-European languages....
(vowels obligatory), SindhiSindhi languageSindhi is the language of the Sindh region of Pakistan that is spoken by the Sindhi people. In India, it is among 22 constitutionally recognized languages, where Sindhis are a sizeable minority. It is spoken by 53,410,910 people in Pakistan, according to the national government's Statistics Division...
, Uighur (vowels obligatory), Urdu, and the languages of many other Muslim peoples - Hebrew Square ScriptHebrew alphabetThe Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...
HebrewHebrew languageHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, Yiddish, and other Jewish languages - Jawi – ArabicArabic languageArabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, MalayMalay languageMalay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore... - Manichaean scriptManichaean scriptManichaean script is a sibling of an early form of Pahlavi script, and like Pahlavi is a development from Imperial Aramaic, the official language and script of the Achaemenid court. Unlike Pahlavi, Manichaean script reveals influences from Sogdian script, which in turn descends from the Syriac...
- Nabataean the NabataeansNabataeansThamudi3.jpgThe Nabataeans, also Nabateans , were ancient peoples of southern Canaan and the northern part of Arabia, whose oasis settlements in the time of Josephus , gave the name of Nabatene to the borderland between Syria and Arabia, from the Euphrates to the Red Sea...
of PetraPetraPetra is a historical and archaeological city in the Jordanian governorate of Ma'an that is famous for its rock cut architecture and water conduits system. Established sometime around the 6th century BC as the capital city of the Nabataeans, it is a symbol of Jordan as well as its most visited... - Pahlavi script Middle PersianMiddle PersianMiddle Persian , indigenously known as "Pârsig" sometimes referred to as Pahlavi or Pehlevi, is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of Southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times became a prestige dialect and so came to be spoken in other regions as well. Middle Persian is classified as a...
- Parthian
- PsalterPsalter alphabetThe Psalter alphabet is an abjad which was used for writing middle Persian on paper, it is thus described as one of the Pahlavi scripts. It was written right to left with dots for word division....
- PhoenicianPhoenician alphabetThe Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, was a non-pictographic consonantal alphabet, or abjad. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia...
Phoenician and other CanaanCanaanCanaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
ite languages - Proto-CanaaniteProto-Canaanite alphabetProto-Canaanite is the name given to the Proto-Sinaitic script when found in Canaan. the early Phoenician script before some cut-off date, typically 1050 BCE. The Phoenician, Hebrew, and other Canaanite dialects were largely indistinguishable before that time...
- Sabaean
- South ArabianSouth Arabian alphabetThe ancient Yemeni alphabet branched from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet in about the 9th century BC. It was used for writing the Yemeni Old South Arabic languages of the Sabaean, Qatabanian, Hadramautic, Minaean, Himyarite, and proto-Ge'ez in Dʿmt...
Sabaic, Qatabanic, Himyaritic, and Hadhramautic
- South Arabian
- SogdianSogdian alphabetThe Sogdian alphabet was originally used for the Sogdian language, a language in the Iranian family used by the people of Sogdiana. The alphabet is derived from Syriac, the descendant script of the Aramaic alphabet. The Sogdian alphabet is one of three scripts used to write the Sogdian language,...
- Samaritan (Old Hebrew)Samaritan alphabetThe Samaritan alphabet is used by the Samaritans for religious writings, including the Samaritan Pentateuch, writings in Samaritan Hebrew, and for commentaries and translations in Samaritan Aramaic and occasionally Arabic....
AramaicAramaic languageAramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,...
, ArabicArabic languageArabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, and HebrewHebrew languageHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such... - SyriacSyriac alphabetThe Syriac alphabet is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language from around the 2nd century BC . It is one of the Semitic abjads directly descending from the Aramaic alphabet and shares similarities with the Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic, and the traditional Mongolian alphabets.-...
SyriacSyriac languageSyriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared as a script in the 1st century AD after being spoken as an unwritten language for five centuries, Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from... - TifinaghTifinaghTifinagh is a series of abjad and alphabetic scripts used by some Berber peoples, notably the Tuareg, to write their language.A modern derivate of the traditional script, known as Neo-Tifinagh, was introduced in the 20th century...
TuaregTuareg languagesTuareg is a Berber language or family of very closely related languages and dialects spoken by the Tuareg Berbers, in large parts of Mali, Niger, Algeria, Libya and Burkina Faso, with a few speakers, the Kinnin, in Chad.- Description :Other Berber languages and Tamashaq are quite mutually... - UgariticUgaritic alphabetThe Ugaritic script is a cuneiform abjad used from around 1400 BCE for Ugaritic, an extinct Northwest Semitic language, and discovered in Ugarit , Syria, in 1928. It has 30 letters...
UgariticUgaritic languageThe following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Ugaritic, Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew:-Grammar:Ugaritic is an inflected language, and as a Semitic language its grammatical features are highly similar to those found in Classical Arabic and Akkadian...
, HurrianHurrian languageHurrian is a conventional name for the language of the Hurrians , a people who entered northern Mesopotamia around 2300 BC and had mostly vanished by 1000 BC. Hurrian was the language of the Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia, and was likely spoken at least initially in Hurrian settlements in...
True alphabets
A true alphabetAlphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
contains separate letters (not diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
marks) for both consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
s and vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s.
Linear nonfeatural alphabets
Linear alphabets are composed of lines on a surface, such as ink on paper.- Arabic (for Uyghur)Uyghur Ereb YéziqiUyghur Arabic script is an Arabic alphabet used for writing the Uyghur language, primarily by Uyghurs living in China. It is one of several Uyghur alphabets....
- ArmenianArmenian alphabetThe Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. It was devised by Saint Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader, and contained originally 36 letters. Two more letters, օ and ֆ, were added in the Middle Ages...
ArmenianArmenian languageThe Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora... - Avestan alphabetAvestan alphabetThe Avestan alphabet is a writing system developed during Iran's Sassanid era to render the Avestan language.As a side effect of its development, the script was also used for Pazend, a method of writing Middle Persian that was used primarily for the Zend commentaries on the texts of the Avesta...
Avestan languageAvestan languageAvestan is an East Iranian language known only from its use as the language of Zoroastrian scripture, i.e. the Avesta, from which it derives its name... - Beitha KukjuBeitha KukjuVithkuqi script, also called Büthakukye or Beitha Kukju after the appellation applied to it by German Albanist Johann Georg von Hahn, was an alphabet invented for writing the Albanian language between 1825 and 1845 by Albanian scholar Naum Veqilharxhi...
AlbanianAlbanian languageAlbanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece... - BoramaBorama scriptThe Borama script is a writing script for the Somali language. It was devised around 1933 by Sheikh Abdurahman Sheikh Nuur of the Gadabuursi clan.-History:...
SomaliSomali languageThe Somali language is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Its nearest relatives are Afar and Oromo. Somali is the best documented of the Cushitic languages, with academic studies beginning before 1900.... - Caucasian Albanian alphabet Old Udi languageUdi languageThe Udi language, spoken by the Udi people, is a member of the Lezgic branch of the Northeast Caucasian language family. It is believed an earlier form of it was the main language of Caucasian Albania, which stretched from south Dagestan to current day Azerbaijan.The language is spoken by about...
- CopticCoptic alphabetThe Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the Greek alphabet augmented by letters borrowed from the Demotic and is the first alphabetic script used for the Egyptian language...
EgyptianEgyptian languageEgyptian is the oldest known indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BC, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century AD in the... - CyrillicCyrillic alphabetThe Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
Eastern Slavic languages (BelarusianBelarusian languageThe Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...
, RussianRussian languageRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, UkrainianUkrainian languageUkrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
), eastern South Slavic languagesSouth Slavic languagesThe South Slavic languages comprise one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers...
(BulgarianBulgarian languageBulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
, MacedonianMacedonian languageMacedonian is a South Slavic language spoken as a first language by approximately 2–3 million people principally in the region of Macedonia but also in the Macedonian diaspora...
, SerbianSerbian languageSerbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
), the other languages of RussiaLanguages of RussiaOf all the languages of Russia, Russian is the only official language. 27 different languages are considered official languages in various regions of Russia, along with Russian. There are over 100 minority languages spoken in Russia today.-History:...
, Kazakh languageKazakh languageKazakh is a Turkic language which belongs to the Kipchak branch of the Turkic languages, closely related to Nogai and Karakalpak....
, Kyrgyz languageKyrgyz languageKyrgyz or Kirgiz, also Kirghiz, Kyrghiz, Qyrghiz is a Turkic language and, together with Russian, an official language of Kyrgyzstan...
, Tajik languageTajik languageTajik, Tajik Persian, or Tajiki, is a variety of modern Persian spoken in Central Asia. Historically Tajiks called their language zabani farsī , meaning Persian language in English; the term zabani tajikī, or Tajik language, was introduced in the 20th century by the Soviets...
, Mongolian languageMongolian languageThe Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
. AzerbaijanAzerbaijanAzerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
, TurkmenistanTurkmenistanTurkmenistan , formerly also known as Turkmenia is one of the Turkic states in Central Asia. Until 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic . Turkmenistan is one of the six independent Turkic states...
, and UzbekistanUzbekistanUzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
are changing to the Latin alphabet but still have considerable use of Cyrillic. See Languages using CyrillicLanguages using CyrillicThis is a list of languages that have been written in the Cyrillic script at one time or another. See also early Cyrillic alphabet.- Indo-European languages :* Indo-Iranian languages**Indo-Aryan languages...
. - Eclectic ShorthandEclectic ShorthandEclectic shorthand is an English shorthand system of the 19th century...
- ElbasanElbasan scriptThe Elbasan script is a mid 18th-century alphabetic script used for the Albanian language. It was named after the city of Elbasan where it was invented...
AlbanianAlbanian languageAlbanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece... - FraserFraser alphabetThe Fraser alphabet or Old Lisu Alphabet is an artificial script invented around 1915 by Sara Ba Thaw, a Karen preacher from Myanmar, and improved by the missionary James O. Fraser, to write the Lisu language. It is a single-case alphabet....
LisuLisu languageLisu is a tonal Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Yunnan , northern Burma , and Thailand and a small part of India. It is the language of the Lisu minority. Lisu has many dialects that originate from the country in which they live. Hua Lisu, Pai Lisu, and Lu Shi Lisu dialects are spoken in China... - Gabelsberger shorthandGabelsberger shorthandGabelsberger shorthand, named for its creator, is a form of shorthand previously common in Germany and Austria. Created circa 1817 by Franz Xaver Gabelsberger, it was first fully described in the 1834 textbook Anleitung zur deutschen Redezeichenkunst oder Stenographie and became rapidly...
- GeorgianGeorgian alphabetThe Georgian alphabet is the writing system used to write the Georgian language and other Kartvelian languages , and occasionally other languages of the Caucasus such as Ossetic and Abkhaz during the 1940s...
GeorgianGeorgian languageGeorgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
and Mingrelian. Variants include Mkhedruli, KhutsuriKhutsuriKhutsuri is the writing system composed by the Asomtavruli and Nuskhuri alphabets....
, Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri - GlagoliticGlagolitic alphabetThe Glagolitic alphabet , also known as Glagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. The name was not coined until many centuries after its creation, and comes from the Old Slavic glagolъ "utterance" . The verb glagoliti means "to speak"...
Old Church SlavonicOld Church SlavonicOld Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek... - GothicGothic alphabetThe Gothic alphabet is an alphabet for writing the Gothic language, created in the 4th century by Ulfilas for the purpose of translating the Christian Bible....
GothicGothic languageGothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus... - GreekGreek alphabetThe Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
GreekGreek languageGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;... - International Phonetic AlphabetInternational Phonetic AlphabetThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
- KaddareKaddare scriptThe Kaddare script is a writing script created to transcribe the Somali language.-History:The orthography was invented in 1952 by Hussein Sheikh Ahmed Kaddare of the Abgaal Hawiye clan....
SomaliSomali languageThe Somali language is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Its nearest relatives are Afar and Oromo. Somali is the best documented of the Cushitic languages, with academic studies beginning before 1900.... - Latin alphabetLatin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
or Roman alphabet originally Latin language; most current western and central European languagesLanguages of EuropeMost of the languages of Europe belong to Indo-European language family. These are divided into a number of branches, including Romance, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Greek, and others. The Uralic languages also have a significant presence in Europe, including the national languages Hungarian, Finnish,...
, Turkic languagesTurkic languagesThe Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
, sub-Saharan African languagesLanguages of AfricaThere are over 2100 and by some counts over 3000 languages spoken natively in Africa in several major language families:*Afro-Asiatic spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel...
, indigenous languages of the AmericasIndigenous languages of the AmericasIndigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language...
, languages of maritime Southeast AsiaMaritime Southeast AsiaMaritime Southeast Asia refers to the maritime region of Southeast Asia as opposed to mainland Southeast Asia and includes the modern countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, East Timor and Singapore....
and languages of OceaniaLanguages of OceaniaMany languages are indigenous to Oceania; they belong to several families. The Austronesian family is the most common, found throughout many Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.Australia is home to many diverse families of indigenous languages:...
use developments of it. Languages using a non-Latin writing system are generally also equipped with RomanizationRomanizationIn linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
for transliterationTransliterationTransliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
or secondary use. - ManchuManchu alphabetThe Manchu alphabet was used for recording the now near-extinct Manchu language; a similar script is used today by the Xibe people, who speak a language descended from Manchu...
ManchuManchu languageManchu is a Tungusic endangered language spoken in Northeast China; it used to be the language of the Manchu, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 70 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus... - MandaicMandaic alphabetThe Mandaic alphabet is based on the Aramaic alphabet, and is used for writing the Mandaic language.The Mandaic name for the script is Abagada or Abaga, after the first letters of the alphabet...
MandaicMandaic languageThe Mandaic language is the language of the Mandaean religion. Classical Mandaic is used by a section of the Mandaean community in liturgical rites....
dialect of AramaicAramaic languageAramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,... - MongolianMongolian scriptThe classical Mongolian script , also known as Uyghurjin, was the first writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most successful until the introduction of Cyrillic in 1946...
MongolianMongolian languageThe Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner... - Neo-TifinaghTifinaghTifinagh is a series of abjad and alphabetic scripts used by some Berber peoples, notably the Tuareg, to write their language.A modern derivate of the traditional script, known as Neo-Tifinagh, was introduced in the 20th century...
TamazightBerber languagesThe Berber languages are a family of languages indigenous to North Africa, spoken from Siwa Oasis in Egypt to Morocco , and south to the countries of the Sahara Desert... - N'KoN'KoN'Ko is both a script devised by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages of West Africa, and the name of the literary language itself written in the script. The term N'Ko means 'I say' in all Manding languages....
Maninka languageManinka languageManinka, or more precisely Eastern Maninka, is the name of several closely related languages and dialects of the southeastern Manding subgroup of the Mande branch of the Niger–Congo languages...
, BambaraBambara languageBambara, more correctly known as Bamanankan , its designation in the language itself , is a language spoken in Mali by as many as six million people...
, Dyula language - OghamOghamOgham is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the Old Irish language, and occasionally the Brythonic language. Ogham is sometimes called the "Celtic Tree Alphabet", based on a High Medieval Bríatharogam tradition ascribing names of trees to the individual letters.There are roughly...
(oːm) GaelicGoidelic languagesThe Goidelic languages or Gaelic languages are one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages, the other consisting of the Brythonic languages. Goidelic languages historically formed a dialect continuum stretching from the south of Ireland through the Isle of Man to the north of Scotland...
, BritannicBrythonic languagesThe Brythonic or Brittonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael...
, PictishPictish languagePictish is a term used for the extinct language or languages thought to have been spoken by the Picts, the people of northern and central Scotland in the Early Middle Ages... - Old HungarianOld Hungarian scriptThe Old Hungarian script is an alphabetic writing system used by the Hungarians before the Middle Ages...
(in Hungarian magyar rovásírás or székely-magyar rovásírás) HungarianHungarian languageHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe.... - Old ItalicOld Italic alphabetOld Italic refers to several now extinct alphabet systems used on the Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various Indo-European languages and non-Indo-European languages...
EtruscanEtruscan languageThe Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization, in what is present-day Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna...
, OscanOscan languageOscan is a term used to describe both an extinct language of southern Italy and the language group to which it belonged.The Oscan language was spoken by a number of tribes, including the Samnites, the Aurunci, the Sidicini, and the Ausones. The latter three tribes were often grouped under the name...
, UmbrianUmbrian languageUmbrian is an extinct Italic language formerly spoken by the Umbri in the ancient Italian region of Umbria. Within the Italic languages it is closely related to the Oscan group and is therefore associated with it in the group of Osco-Umbrian languages...
, RaeticRaetic languageRaetic is an extinct language spoken in the ancient region of Raetia in the Eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by a limited number of short inscriptions in two variants of the Etruscan alphabet...
, VeneticVenetic languageVenetic is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken in ancient times in the North East of Italy and part of modern Slovenia, between the Po River delta and the southern fringe of the Alps....
, LeponticLepontic languageLepontic is an extinct Alpine language that was spoken in parts of Rhaetia and Cisalpine Gaul between 550 and 100 BC. It was a Celtic language, although its exact classification within Celtic has been the object of debate...
, MessapianMessapian languageMessapian is an extinct Indo-European language of South-eastern Italy, once spoken in the region of Apulia. It was spoken by the three Iapygian tribes of the region: the Messapians, the Dauni and the Peucetii....
, South Picene languageSouth Picene languageSouth Picene is an extinct Italic language, belonging to the Sabellic subfamily. It is currently considered by SIL International to belong to the Umbrian Group although in the long history of its attempted classification it has been placed at a higher level, parallel to Oscan and Umbrian within... - Old PermicOld Permic scriptThe Old Permic script, sometimes called Abur or Anbur, is an original ancient Permic writing system.-History:The alphabet was introduced by a Russian missionary, Stepan Khrap, also known as Saint Stephen of Perm in 1372. The name Abur is derived from the names of the first two characters: An and Bur...
(also called Abur) KomiKomi languageThe Komi language is a Finno-Permic language spoken by the Komi peoples in the northeastern European part of Russia. Komi is one of the two members of the Permic subgroup of the Finno-Ugric branch... - Old Turkic TurkicTurkic languagesThe Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
- Old Uyghur alphabetOld Uyghur alphabetThe Old Uyghur alphabet was used for writing the Old Uyghur language, a variety of Old Turkic spoken in the Tarim basin, which is an ancestor of the modern Uyghur language. It was descendant of the Sogdian alphabet, used for texts with Buddhist, Manichaean and Christian content for 700–800 years in...
UyghurUyghur languageUyghur , formerly known as Eastern Turk, is a Turkic language with 8 to 11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and various other... - Osmanya SomaliSomali languageThe Somali language is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Its nearest relatives are Afar and Oromo. Somali is the best documented of the Cushitic languages, with academic studies beginning before 1900....
- Runic alphabetRunic alphabetThe runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes to write various Germanic languages before the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter...
Germanic languagesGermanic languagesThe Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe... - Ol Cemet' SantaliSantali languageSanthali is a language in the Santhali subfamily of Austro-Asiatic, related to Ho and Mundari. It is spoken by about six million people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan . Most of its speakers live in India, in the states of Jharkhand, Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Tripura, and West Bengal. It has...
- Tai Lue LueDai peopleThe Dai peoples is one of several ethnic groups living in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture and the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture , but by extension can apply to groups in Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, and Burma when Dai is used to mean specifically Tai Lue, Chinese Shan or even...
- VahBassa VahThe Bassa script, known as Bassa vah or simply vah was an alphabet designed by, or with the help of, Liberian missionaries in the 1920s. It is not clear what connection it may have had with neighboring scripts, or how much it was actually used, but type was cast for it, and an association for its...
BassaBassa languageThe Bassa language is a Kru language spoken by about 350,000 people in Liberia and 5,000 in Sierra Leone by Bassa people.It has an indigenous script, Vah, developed before 1907 by Thomas Narvin Lewis while he was studying at Syracuse University in the United States. The first primer was printed... - Zaghawa ZaghawaZaghawa languageThe Zaghawa language is a Saharan language spoken by the Zaghawa people of eastern central Chad and northwestern Sudan ....
Featural linear alphabets
A featural scriptFeatural alphabet
A featural alphabet is an alphabet wherein the shapes of the letters are not arbitrary, but encode phonological features of the phonemes they represent. The term featural was introduced by Geoffrey Sampson to describe Hangul and Pitman Shorthand...
has elements that indicate the components of articulation, such as bilabial consonant
Bilabial consonant
In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
s, fricatives
Fricative consonant
Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
, or back vowel
Back vowel
A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
s. Scripts differ in how many features they indicate.
- Gregg ShorthandGregg ShorthandGregg shorthand is a form of stenography that was invented by John Robert Gregg in 1888. Like cursive longhand, it is completely based on elliptical figures and lines that bisect them. Gregg shorthand is the most popular form of pen stenography in the United States and its Spanish adaptation is...
- HangulHangulHangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
KoreanKorean languageKorean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing... - Shavian alphabetShavian alphabetThe Shavian alphabet is an alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonetic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of the conventional spelling. It was posthumously funded by and named after Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw...
- TengwarTengwarThe Tengwar are an artificial script created by J. R. R. Tolkien. In his fictional universe of Middle-earth, the tengwar were invented by the Elf Fëanor, and used first to write the Elven tongues: Quenya, Telerin, and also Valarin. Later a great number of languages of Middle-earth were written...
(a fictional script) - Visible SpeechVisible SpeechVisible speech is the writing system used by Alexander Melville Bell, who was known internationally as a teacher of speech and proper elocution and an author of books on the subject. The system is composed of symbols that show the position and movement of the throat, tongue, and lips as they...
(a phonetic script) - Stokoe notationStokoe notationStokoe notation is the first phonemic script used for sign languages. It was created by William Stokoe for American Sign Language , with Latin letters and numerals used for the shapes they have in fingerspelling, and iconic glyphs to transcribe the position, movement, and orientation of the hands...
for American Sign LanguageAmerican Sign LanguageAmerican Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico... - SignWritingSignWritingSignWriting is a system of writing sign languages. It is highly featural and visually iconic, both in the shapes of the characters, which are abstract pictures of the hands, face, and body, and in their spatial arrangement on the page, which does not follow a sequential order like the letters that...
for sign languages
Manual alphabets
Manual alphabets are frequently found as parts of sign languageSign language
A sign language is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's...
s. They are not used for writing per se, but for spelling out words while signing.
- American manual alphabet (used with slight modification in Hong KongHong KongHong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, Malaysia, ParaguayParaguayParaguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...
, PhilippinesPhilippinesThe Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, SingaporeSingaporeSingapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, TaiwanTaiwanTaiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
, ThailandThailandThailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
) - British manual alphabetTwo-handed manual alphabetSeveral manual alphabets in use around the world employ two hands for some or all of the letters.- BANZSL alphabet :This alphabet is used in the BANZSL group of sign languages. It has been used in British Sign Language and Auslan since at least the 19th century, and in New Zealand Sign Language...
(used in some of the Commonwealth of NationsCommonwealth of NationsThe Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
, such as AustraliaAustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and New ZealandNew ZealandNew Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
) - Catalonian manual alphabetCatalonian manual alphabetThe Catalonian manual alphabet is used in Catalan Sign Language. It is one of the oldest manual alphabets still in use....
- Chilean manual alphabetChilean manual alphabetThe Chilean manual alphabet is used by the Chilean Deaf community to sign Spanish words, and is incorporated into Chilean Sign Language. It is a one-handed alphabet, similar enough to the American manual alphabet for the two to be mutually intelligible, except for the letters Q , T , S and X , U...
- Chinese manual alphabet
- Dutch manual alphabet
- Ethiopian manual alphabet (an abugida)
- French manual alphabetFrench manual alphabetThe French manual alphabet is an alphabet used for French Sign Language, both to distinguish FSL words and to sign French words in FSL.The alphabet has the following letters:...
- Greek manual alphabet
- Icelandic manual alphabet (also used in DenmarkDenmarkDenmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
) - Indian manual alphabet (a true alphabet?; used in DevanagariDevanagariDevanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...
and GujaratiGujarati languageGujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...
areas) - International manual alphabet (used in GermanyGermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, AustriaAustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, NorwayNorwayNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, FinlandFinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
) - Iranian manual alphabet (an abjad; also used in EgyptEgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
) - Israeli manual alphabet (an abjad)
- Italian manual alphabet
- Korean manual alphabetKorean manual alphabetThe Korean manual alphabet is used by the Deaf in South Korea who speak Korean Sign Language. It is a one-handed alphabet that mimics the shapes of the letters in hangul, and is used when signing Korean as well as being integrated into KSL.-Consonants:...
- Latin American manual alphabets
- Polish manual alphabetPolish manual alphabetThe Polish manual alphabet is a single-handed manual alphabet used in Polish Sign Language....
- Portuguese manual alphabet
- Romanian manual alphabet
- Russian manual alphabetRussian Manual AlphabetThe Russian Manual Alphabet is used for fingerspelling in Russian sign language. The alphabet consists of Cyrillic letters, the same used in Russian and other languages....
(also used in BulgariaBulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
and ex-SovietSoviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
states) - Spanish manual alphabetSpanish manual alphabetAn early representation of the Spanish manual alphabet, engraved by Francisco de Paula Martí y Mora and published in 1815. Of an edition of 300, the only surviving copy is in the Biblioteca de Catalunya in Barcelona....
(MadridMadridMadrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
) - Swedish manual alphabet
- Yugoslav manual alphabet
Other non-linear alphabets
These are other alphabets composed of something other than lines on a surface.- Braille (Unified)BrailleThe Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write, and was the first digital form of writing.Braille was devised in 1825 by Louis Braille, a blind Frenchman. Each Braille character, or cell, is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two...
an embossed alphabet for the visually impaired, used with some extra letters to transcribe the Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabets, as well as Chinese - Braille (Korean)Korean BrailleKorean braille is a braille code used for writing the Korean language. It is not graphically related to other braille systems found around the world. Instead, it reflects the patterns found in hangul. It is a combination of initial consonants, vowels, and final consonants...
- Braille (American) (defunct)
- New York PointNew York PointNew York Point is a system of writing for the blind invented by William Bell Wait , a teacher in the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind. The system used three bases of equidistant points arranged in two horizontal lines with one, two, three or four points in each line...
a defunct alternative to Braille - International maritime signal flagsInternational maritime signal flagsThe system of international maritime signal flags is one system of flag signals representing individual letters of the alphabet in signals to or from ships...
(both alphabetic and ideographic) - Morse code (International)Morse codeMorse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
a trinary code of dashes, dots, and silence, whether transmitted by electricity, light, or sound) representing characters in the Latin alphabet. - American Morse codeAmerican Morse codeAmerican Morse Code — also known as Railroad Morse—is the latter-day name for the original version of the Morse Code developed in the mid-1840s, by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail for their electric telegraph...
(defunct) - Optical telegraphy (defunct)
- Flag semaphoreFlag semaphoreSemaphore Flags is the system for conveying information at a distance by means of visual signals with hand-held flags, rods, disks, paddles, or occasionally bare or gloved hands. Information is encoded by the position of the flags; it is read when the flag is in a fixed position...
(made by moving hand-held flags)
Abugidas
An abugidaAbugida
An abugida , also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit: each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is obligatory but secondary...
, or alphasyllabary, is a segmental script in which vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
sounds are denoted by diacritical marks or other systematic modification of the consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
s. Generally, however, if a single letter is understood to have an inherent unwritten vowel, and only vowels other than this are written, then the system is classified as an abugida regardless of whether the vowels look like diacritics or full letters. The vast majority of abugidas are found from India to Southeast Asia and belong historically to the Brāhmī family.
Abugidas of the Brāhmī family
- Anga ScriptAnga Lipi-Etymology & History:Anga referred to a region in what is now Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal states of India, and Lipi meant script.Anga Script is mentioned in an ancient Sanskrit language Buddhist book "Lalitvistar" , which says Anga Lipi was one of the most important scripts among 64 other scripts...
Angika - AhomAhom alphabetThe Ahom script is an abugida that was used to write the Ahom language, an extinct Tai language spoken by the Ahom people who ruled eastern part of Brahmaputra valley - about one-third of the length of Brahmaputra valley - in the Indian state of Assam between the 13th and the 18th centuries.-...
- AssameseAssamese scriptThe Assamese script is a variant of the Eastern Nagari script also used for Bengali and Bishnupriya Manipuri. The Eastern Nagari script belongs to the Brahmic family of scripts and has a continuous history of development from Nagari script, a precursor of Devanagari...
Assamese/Assami/Assamiya/ÔxômiyaAssamese languageAssamese is the easternmost Indo-Aryan language. It is used mainly in the state of Assam in North-East India. It is also the official language of Assam. It is also spoken in parts of Arunachal Pradesh and other northeast Indian states. Nagamese, an Assamese-based Creole language is widely used in... - BrāhmīBrāhmī scriptBrāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing...
PrakritPrakritPrakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the literary and religious...
, SanskritSanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand... - Balinese
- Batak Toba and other BatakBatak (Indonesia)Batak is a collective term used to identify a number of ethnic groups predominantly found in North Sumatra, Indonesia. The term is used to include the Toba, Karo, Pakpak, Simalungun, Angkola and Mandailing, each of which are distinct but related groups with distinct, albeit related, languages and...
languages - BaybayinBaybayinBaybayin , is a pre-Spanish Philippine writing system. It is a member of the Brahmic family and is recorded as being in use in the 16th century...
IlokanoIlokano languageIlokano or Ilocano is the third most-spoken language of the Republic of the Philippines....
, KapampanganKapampangan languageThe Pampangan language, or Kapampangan , is one of the major languages of the Philippines. It is the language spoken in the province of Pampanga, the southern half of the province of Tarlac and the northern portion of the province of Bataan. Kapampangan is also understood in some barangays of...
, PangasinanPangasinan languageThe Pangasinan language or Pangasinense is one of the twelve major languages in the Philippines....
, TagalogTagalog languageTagalog is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by a third of the population of the Philippines and as a second language by most of the rest. It is the first language of the Philippine region IV and of Metro Manila...
, Bikol languagesBikol languagesThe Bikol languages are a group of Central Philippine languages spoken particularly on the Bicol Peninsula on the island of Luzon and parts of Catanduanes and Burias Island, Masbate Province...
, Visayan languagesVisayan languagesThe Visayan languages of the Philippines, along with Tagalog and Bikol, are part of the Central Philippine languages...
, and possibly other Philippine languagesPhilippine languagesThe Philippine languages are a 1991 proposal by Robert Blust that all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi—except Sama–Bajaw and a few languages of Palawan—form a subfamily of Austronesian languages... - BengaliBengali scriptThe Bengali alphabet is the writing system for the Bengali language. The script with variations is used for Assamese and is basis for Meitei, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Kokborok, Garo and Mundari alphabets. All these languages are spoken in the eastern region of South Asia. Historically, the script has...
BengaliBengali languageBengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
, MaithiliMaithili languageMaithili language is spoken in the eastern region of India and South-eastern region of Nepal. The native speakers of Maithili reside in Bihar, Jharkhand,parts of West Bengal and South-east Nepal... - BuhidBuhid scriptBuhid, is an indigenous Brahmic script of the Philippines, closely related to Baybayin, and is used today by the Mangyans to write their language, Buhid.- Unicode :Buhid script was added to the Unicode Standard in March, 2002 with the release of version 3.2....
- BurmeseBurmese alphabetThe Burmese script is an abugida in the Brahmic family used for writing Burmese. Furthermore, various other scripts share some aspect and letters of the Burmese script, though they should not be considered strictly Burmese, including Mon, Shan, S'gaw Karen, Eastern and Western Pwo Karen and Geba...
BurmeseBurmese languageThe Burmese language is the official language of Burma. Although the constitution officially recognizes it as the Myanmar language, most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese. Burmese is the native language of the Bamar and related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar, as well as...
, Karen languagesKaren languagesThe Karen languages are tonal languages spoken by some three million Karen people. They are of unclear affiliation within the Tibeto-Burman languages. The Karen languages are written using the Burmese script. The three main branches are Sgaw, Pwo, and Pa'o. Karenni and Kayan are related to the...
, MonMon languageThe Mon language is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Mon, who live in Burma and Thailand. Mon, like the related language Cambodian—but unlike most languages in Mainland Southeast Asia—is not tonal. Mon is spoken by more than a million people today. In recent years, usage of Mon has...
, and ShanShan languageThe Shan language is the native language of Shan people and spoken mostly in Shan State, Burma. It is also used in pockets of Kachin State in Burma, in northern Thailand, and in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China. Shan is a member of the Tai–Kadai language family, and... - ChamCham alphabetThe Cham alphabet is an abugida used to write Cham, an Austronesian language spoken by some 230,000 Cham people in Vietnam and Cambodia. It is written horizontally left to right, as is English.- History :...
- Dehong Dehong DaiTai Nüa languageTai Nüa is one of the languages spoken by the Dai people in China, especially in the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture in the southwest of Yunnan province...
- DevanāgarīDevanagariDevanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...
HindiHindiStandard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
, SanskritSanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, MarathiMarathi languageMarathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
, NepaliNepali languageNepali or Nepalese is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.It is the official language and de facto lingua franca of Nepal and is also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar...
, and many other languages of northern India - GujarātiGujarati scriptThe Gujarati script , which like all Nāgarī writing systems is strictly speaking an abugida rather than an alphabet, is used to write the Gujarati and Kutchi languages...
GujarātiGujarati languageGujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...
, Kachchi - Gurmukhi scriptGurmukhi scriptGurmukhi is the most common script used for writing the Punjabi language. An abugida derived from the Laṇḍā script and ultimately descended from Brahmi, Gurmukhi was standardized by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad Dev Ji, in the 16th century. The whole of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji's 1430...
PunjabiPunjabi languagePunjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region . For Sikhs, the Punjabi language stands as the official language in which all ceremonies take place. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language... - Hanuno’o
- Javanese
- Kaganga RejangRejang languageRejang is spoken by the Rejang people in Bengkulu, Indonesia. It is a Malayo-Polynesian language but has not been further classified. It has five major dialects...
- KaithiKaithiKaithi , also called "Kayathi" or "Kayasthi", is the name of a historical script used widely in parts of North India, primarily in the former North-Western Provinces, Oudh and Bihar...
- KannadaKannada scriptThe Kannada script is an alphasyllabary of the Brahmic family, used primarily to write the Kannada language, one of the Dravidian languages of southern India and also Sanskrit in the past. The Telugu script is derived from Old Kannada, and resembles Kannada script...
KannadaKannada languageKannada or , is a language spoken in India predominantly in the state of Karnataka. Kannada, whose native speakers are called Kannadigas and number roughly 50 million, is one of the 30 most spoken languages in the world...
, TuluTulu languageThe Tulu language |?]]]) is a Dravidian language spoken by 1.95 million native speakers mainly in the southwest part of Indian state Karnataka known as Tulu Nadu. In India, 1.72 million people speak it as their mother tongue , increased by 10 percent over the 1991 census... - Kawi
- Khmer
- LaoLao alphabetThe Lao alphabet, Aksone Lao , is the main script used to write the Lao language and other minority languages in Laos. It is ultimately of Indic origin, the alphabet includes 27 consonants , 7 consonantal ligatures , 33 vowels , and 4 tone marks...
- Limbu
- Lontara’ BugineseBuginese languageBuginese is the language spoken by about four million people mainly in the southern part of Sulawesi, Indonesia.-History:The word Buginese derives from the word Bahasa Bugis in Malay. In Buginese, it is called while the Bugis people are called...
, MakassarMakassar languageMakassarese is a language used by the Makassarese people in South Sulawesi island in Indonesia...
, and MandarMandar languageMandar is an Austronesian language spoken by the group ethnic Mandar living in West Sulawesi province, Indonesia, especially in the sea side regencies like - Majene and Polewali-Mandar as well as few settlements in the islands of Pangkep District also known as Spermonde Archipelago and Ujung Lero,... - MalayalamMalayalam scriptThe Malayalam script is a Brahmic script used commonly to write the Malayalam language—which is the principal language of the Indian state of Kerala, spoken by 36 million people in the world. Like many other Indic scripts, it is an abugida, or a writing system that is partially “alphabetic” and...
- Modi MarathiMarathi languageMarathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
- NepalNepal scriptNepal script is a group of scripts that developed from the Brahmi script and are used primarily in Nepal Bhasa. It is also used to write Sanskrit.-Scripts based on Nepal script:The scripts are as follows-*Ranjana script...
Nepal BhasaNepal BhasaNepal Bhasa is one of the major languages of Nepal, and is also spoken in India, particularly in Sikkim where it is one of the 11 official languages. Nepal Bhasa is the mother tongue of about 3% of the people in Nepal . It is spoken mainly by the Newars, who chiefly inhabit the towns of the...
, SanskritSanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand... - OriyaOriya scriptThe Oriya script or Utkala Lipi or Utkalakshara is used to write the Oriya language, and can be used for several other Indian languages, for example, Sanskrit.- History :...
- Phags-paPhagspa scriptThe Phags-pa script was an alphabet designed by the Tibetan Lama 'Gro-mgon Chos-rgyal 'Phags-pa for Yuan emperor Kublai Khan, as a unified script for the literary languages of the Yuan Dynasty....
MongolianMongolian languageThe Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
, ChineseChinese languageThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, and other languages of the Yuan DynastyYuan DynastyThe Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was a ruling dynasty founded by the Mongol leader Kublai Khan, who ruled most of present-day China, all of modern Mongolia and its surrounding areas, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. It is considered both as a division of the Mongol Empire and as an...
Mongol EmpireMongol EmpireThe Mongol Empire , initially named as Greater Mongol State was a great empire during the 13th and 14th centuries... - RanjanaRanjana scriptThe Rañjanā script is an abugida writing system which developed in the 11th century. It is primarily used for writing Nepal Bhasa but is also used in monasteries of India, Tibet, coastline China, Mongolia, and Japan. It is usually written from left to right but the Kutakshar form is written from...
Nepal BhasaNepal BhasaNepal Bhasa is one of the major languages of Nepal, and is also spoken in India, particularly in Sikkim where it is one of the 11 official languages. Nepal Bhasa is the mother tongue of about 3% of the people in Nepal . It is spoken mainly by the Newars, who chiefly inhabit the towns of the...
, SanskritSanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand... - ŚāradāSarada scriptThe Śāradā, or Sharada, script is an abugida writing system of the Brahmic family of scripts, developed around the 8th century. It was used for writing Sanskrit and Kashmiri. The Gurmukhī script was developed from Śāradā...
- Siddham used to write SanskritSanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
- Sinhala
- Sourashtra
- SoyomboSoyombo scriptThe Soyombo script is an abugida developed by the Mongolian monk and scholar Bogdo Zanabazar in 1686 to write Mongolian.It can also be used to write Tibetan and Sanskrit....
- SundaneseSundanese scriptSundanese script Sundanese script Sundanese script (Aksara Sunda, is a writing system which is used by some Sundanese people. It is built based on Old Sundanese script (Aksara Sunda Kuna) which was used by ancientSundanese between 14th and 18th centuries....
- Syloti Nagri – SylhetiSylheti languageSylheti is the language of Sylhet, which is also known as the Surma Valley and is located in the north-eastern region of Bangladesh, and also spoken in parts of the Northeast Indian states of Assam and Tripura...
- Tagbanwa Languages of Palawan
- Tai DamTai DamThe Tai Dam or Tai Dum are an ethnic group of Laos, Vietnam, China, and Thailand.Tai Dam speakers in China are classified as part of the Dai nationality along with almost all the other Tai peoples...
- Tai Tham KhünKhün languageThe Khün language or Tai Khün language is the language of the Tai Khün people of Kengtung, Shan state, Myanmar. It is a Tai language, closely related to Thai and Lao.-Phonology:-External links:*...
, and Northern ThaiNorthern Thai languageNorthern Thai, Lanna, or Kham Mueang is the language of the Thai Yuan people of Lannathai, Thailand. It is a Tai language, closely related to Thai and Lao... - TamilTamil scriptThe Tamil script is a script that is used to write the Tamil language as well as other minority languages such as Badaga, Irulas, and Paniya...
- TeluguTelugu scriptTelugu script, an abugida from the Brahmic family of scripts, is used to write the Telugu language, a language found in the South-Central Indian state of Andhra Pradesh as well as several other neighboring states. The Telugu script is derived from the Bhattiprolu script...
- ThaiThai alphabetThai script , is used to write the Thai language and other, minority, languages in Thailand. It has forty-four consonants , fifteen vowel symbols that combine into at least twenty-eight vowel forms, and four tone marks ....
- Tibetan
- Tirhuta used to write MaithiliMaithili languageMaithili language is spoken in the eastern region of India and South-eastern region of Nepal. The native speakers of Maithili reside in Bihar, Jharkhand,parts of West Bengal and South-east Nepal...
- TocharianTocharian scriptThe Tocharian language is documented in manuscript fragments, mostly from the 8th century that were written on palm leaves, wooden tablets and Chinese paper, preserved by the extremely dry climate of the Tarim Basin...
- Varang KshitiVarang KshitiVarang Kshiti is a syllabic alphabet invented by Lako Bodra , used in primary and adult education and in various publications. It is used to write Ho, a language used in the Indian states of Bihar and Orissa....
HoHo languageHo is a Munda language of the Austroasiatic language family spoken primarily in India by about 3,803,126 people. It is written with the Devanagari and the Varang Kshiti scripts. It is spoken by the Ho people. 0.103% of India's Population speaks this language as per the 2001 census.The Script was...
Other Abugidas
- Canadian Aboriginal syllabicsCanadian Aboriginal SyllabicsCanadian Aboriginal syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of abugidas used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and Athabaskan language families....
Cree syllabicsCree syllabicsCree syllabics, found in two primary variants, are the versions of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics used to write Cree dialects, including the original syllabics system created for Cree and Ojibwe. Syllabics were later adapted to several other languages...
(for CreeCree languageCree is an Algonquian language spoken by approximately 117,000 people across Canada, from the Northwest Territories and Alberta to Labrador, making it the aboriginal language with the highest number of speakers in Canada. It is also spoken in the U.S. state of Montana...
), Inuktitut syllabicsInuktitut syllabicsInuktitut syllabics is a writing system used by the Inuit in Nunavut and in Nunavik, Quebec...
(for Inuktitut), and other variants for OjibweOjibwe languageOjibwe , also called Anishinaabemowin, is an indigenous language of the Algonquian language family. Ojibwe is characterized by a series of dialects that have local names and frequently local writing systems...
, CarrierCarrier languageThe Carrier language is a Northern Athabaskan language. It is named after the Dakelh people, a First Nations people of the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada, for whom Carrier is the usual English name. People who are referred to as Carrier speak two related languages. One,...
, BlackfootBlackfootThe Blackfoot Confederacy or Niitsítapi is the collective name of three First Nations in Alberta and one Native American tribe in Montana....
, and other languages of Canada - EthiopicGe'ez alphabetGe'ez , also called Ethiopic, is a script used as an abugida for several languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea but originated in an abjad used to write Ge'ez, now the liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Church...
AmharicAmharic languageAmharic is a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia. It is the second most-spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic, and the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Thus, it has official status and is used nationwide. Amharic is also the official or working...
, Ge’ezGe'ez languageGe'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the northern region of Ethiopia and southern Eritrea in the Horn of Africa...
, OromoOromo languageOromo, also known as Afaan Oromo, Oromiffa, Afan Boran, Afan Orma, and sometimes in other languages by variant spellings of these names , is an Afro-Asiatic language, and the most widely spoken of the Cushitic family. Forms of Oromo are spoken as a first language by more than 25 million Oromo and...
, Tigrigna - Kharoṣṭhī GandhariGandhari languageGāndhārī was a north-western prakrit spoken in Gāndhāra. Like all prakrits, it is thus descended from either Vedic Sanskrit or a closely related language. Gāndhārī was written in the script...
, SanskritSanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand... - MandombeMandombeThe word 'Mandombe' in the Mandombe script.Mandombe or Mandombé, is a revealed script invented in 1978 by Wabeladio Payi in Mbanza-Ngungu in the Bas-Congo province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, after speaking with Simon Kimbangu, the prophet of the Kimbanguist Church, in a dream...
- MeroiticMeroitic scriptThe Meroitic script is an alphabetic script originally derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, used to write the Meroitic language of the Kingdom of Meroë/Kush. It was developed in the Napatan Period , and first appears in the 2nd century BCE. For a time, it was also possibly used to write the Nubian...
MeroëMeroëMeroë Meroitic: Medewi or Bedewi; Arabic: and Meruwi) is an ancient city on the east bank of the Nile about 6 km north-east of the Kabushiya station near Shendi, Sudan, approximately 200 km north-east of Khartoum. Near the site are a group of villages called Bagrawiyah... - Pitman ShorthandPitman ShorthandPitman shorthand is a system of shorthand for the English language developed by Englishman Sir Isaac Pitman , who first presented it in 1837. Like most systems of shorthand, it is a phonetic system; the symbols do not represent letters, but rather sounds, and words are, for the most part, written...
- Pollard scriptPollard scriptThe Pollard script, also known as Pollard Miao, is an abugida loosely based on the Latin alphabet and invented by Methodist missionary Sam Pollard. Pollard invented the script for use with A-Hmao, one of several dialects of the Hmong language. The script underwent a series of revisions until 1936,...
MiaoHmong languageHmong or Mong is the common name for a dialect continuum of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmong–Mien/Miao–Yao language family spoken by the Hmong people of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos... - Sorang SompengSorang SompengSorang Sompeng script is used to write in Sora, a Munda language with 273,911 speakers in India. The script was created by Mangei Gomango in 1936 and is used in religious contexts...
SoraSora languageSora is a Munda language of India, spoken by some 288,000 native speakers in South Orissa in eastern India, mainly in the Ganjam District, but also in the Koraput and Phulbani districts; other communities exist in Andhra Pradesh , Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and the... - ThaanaThaanaThaana, Taana or Tāna is the modern writing system of the Divehi language spoken in the Maldives. Taana has characteristics of both an abugida and a true alphabet , with consonants derived from indigenous and Arabic numerals, and vowels derived from the vowel diacritics of the Arabic abjad...
DhivehiDhivehi languageMaldivian is an Indo-Aryan language predominantly spoken by about 350,000 people in the Maldives where it is the national language. It is also the first language of nearly 10,000 people in the island of Minicoy in the Union territory of Lakshadweep, India where the Mahl dialect of the Maldivian... - Thomas Natural ShorthandThomas Natural ShorthandThomas Natural Shorthand is an English shorthand system created by Charles A. Thomas which was first published in 1935. Thomas described his system as "designed to meet the existing need for a simple, legible shorthand that is based on already familiar writing lines, and that is written with a...
Final consonant-diacritic abugidas
In at least one abugida, not only the vowel but any syllable-finalSyllable coda
In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. Some syllables consist only of a nucleus with no coda...
consonant is written with a diacritic. That is, representing [o] with an under-ring, and final [k] with an over-cross, [sok] would written as s̥̽.
- RóngRongRong is an village in Øygarden, Norway, located on the island of Rongøy. It is connected to Toftøy via the Rongesundet Bridge, which crosses the sound Rongesundet....
LepchaLepcha languageLepcha language, or Róng language , is a Himalayish language spoken by the Lepcha people in Sikkim and parts of West Bengal, Nepal and Bhutan.-Population:...
Vowel-based abugidas
In a couple abugidas, the vowels are basic, and the consonants secondary. If no consonant is written in Pahawh Hmong, it is understood to be /k/; consonants are written after the vowel they precede in speech. In Japanese Braille, the vowels but not the consonants have independent status, and it is the vowels which are modified when the consonant is y or w.- Boyd's Syllabic ShorthandBoyd's Syllabic ShorthandBoyd's syllabic shorthand is a system of shorthand invented by Robert Boyd, published originally in 1903, and updated in 1912. In this system, symbols are distinguished both by orientation and shape, with the shape representing the vowel and the orientation the consonant...
- Japanese BrailleJapanese BrailleJapanese braille is a braille code for writing the Japanese language. It is based on the original braille system. In Japanese it is known as , literally "dot characters". Below is a basic chart of Japanese braille with the Japanese hiragana character followed by the standard roman character reading...
JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an... - Pahawh HmongPahawh HmongPahawh Hmong is an indigenous semi-syllabic script, invented in 1959, to write the Hmong language.-Form:Pahawh is written left to right...
abugida HmongHmong languageHmong or Mong is the common name for a dialect continuum of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmong–Mien/Miao–Yao language family spoken by the Hmong people of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos...
Undeciphered systems which may be writing
These systems have not been deciphered. In some cases, such as MeroiticMeroitic script
The Meroitic script is an alphabetic script originally derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, used to write the Meroitic language of the Kingdom of Meroë/Kush. It was developed in the Napatan Period , and first appears in the 2nd century BCE. For a time, it was also possibly used to write the Nubian...
, the sound values of the glyphs are known, but the texts still cannot be read because the language is not understood. Several of these systems, such as Epi-Olmec
Isthmian script
The Isthmian script is a very early Mesoamerican writing system in use in the area of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from perhaps 500 BCE to 500 CE, although there is disagreement on these dates...
and Indus
Indus script
The term Indus script refers to short strings of symbols associated with the Indus Valley Civilization, in use during the Early Harappan and Mature Harappan period, between the 35th and 20th centuries BC. In spite of many attempts at decipherments and claims, it is as yet undeciphered...
, are claimed to have been deciphered, but these claims have not been confirmed by independent researchers. In many cases it is doubtful that they are actually writing. The Vinča symbols appear to be proto-writing, and quipu
Quipu
Quipus or khipus were recording devices used in the Inca Empire and its predecessor societies in the Andean region. A quipu usually consisted of colored, spun, and plied thread or strings from llama or alpaca hair. It could also be made of cotton cords...
may have recorded only numerical information. There are doubts that Indus
Indus script
The term Indus script refers to short strings of symbols associated with the Indus Valley Civilization, in use during the Early Harappan and Mature Harappan period, between the 35th and 20th centuries BC. In spite of many attempts at decipherments and claims, it is as yet undeciphered...
is writing, and the Phaistos Disc
Phaistos Disc
The Phaistos Disc is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the Greek island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age . It is about 15 cm in diameter and covered on both sides with a spiral of stamped symbols...
has so little content or context that its nature in undetermined.
- Byblos syllabaryByblos syllabaryThe Byblos syllabary, also known as the Pseudo-hieroglyphic script, Proto-Byblian, Proto-Byblic, or Byblic, is officially an undeciphered writing system, known from ten inscriptions found in Byblos. The inscriptions are engraved on bronze plates and spatulas, and carved in stone...
the city of ByblosByblosByblos is the Greek name of the Phoenician city Gebal . It is a Mediterranean city in the Mount Lebanon Governorate of present-day Lebanon under the current Arabic name of Jubayl and was also referred to as Gibelet during the Crusades... - IsthmianIsthmian scriptThe Isthmian script is a very early Mesoamerican writing system in use in the area of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from perhaps 500 BCE to 500 CE, although there is disagreement on these dates...
(apparently logosyllabic) - IndusIndus scriptThe term Indus script refers to short strings of symbols associated with the Indus Valley Civilization, in use during the Early Harappan and Mature Harappan period, between the 35th and 20th centuries BC. In spite of many attempts at decipherments and claims, it is as yet undeciphered...
Indus Valley CivilizationIndus Valley CivilizationThe Indus Valley Civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that was located in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, consisting of what is now mainly modern-day Pakistan and northwest India... - QuipuQuipuQuipus or khipus were recording devices used in the Inca Empire and its predecessor societies in the Andean region. A quipu usually consisted of colored, spun, and plied thread or strings from llama or alpaca hair. It could also be made of cotton cords...
Inca EmpireInca EmpireThe Inca Empire, or Inka Empire , was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political and military center of the empire was located in Cusco in modern-day Peru. The Inca civilization arose from the highlands of Peru sometime in the early 13th century...
(probably numerical only) - Khitan small scriptKhitan small scriptThe Khitan small script was one of two writing systems used for the now-extinct Khitan language. It was used during the 10th-12th century by the Khitan people, who had created the Liao Empire in north-eastern China. In addition to the small script, the Khitans simultaneously also used a...
KhitanKhitan languageThe Khitan language is a now-extinct language once spoken by the Khitan people . Khitan is generally deemed to be genetically linked to the Mongolic languages. It was written using two mutually exclusive writing systems known as the Khitan large script and the Khitan small script... - Cretan hieroglyphsCretan hieroglyphsCretan hieroglyphs are hieroglyphs found on artifacts of Bronze Age Minoan Crete . Symbol inventories have been compiled by Evans , Meijer , Olivier/Godart...
- Linear ALinear ALinear A is one of two scripts used in ancient Crete before Mycenaean Greek Linear B; Cretan hieroglyphs is the second script. In Minoan times, before the Mycenaean Greek dominion, Linear A was the official script for the palaces and religious activities, and hieroglyphs were mainly used on seals....
(a syllabary) Minoan - Mixtec MixtecMixtecThe Mixtec are indigenous Mesoamerican peoples inhabiting the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Puebla in a region known as La Mixteca. The Mixtecan languages form an important branch of the Otomanguean language family....
(perhaps pictographic) - OlmecOlmec hieroglyphsThe Cascajal Block is a writing tablet-sized serpentinite slab which has been dated to the early first millennium BCE incised with hitherto unknown characters that may represent the earliest writing system in the New World. Archaeologist Stephen D...
Olmec civilizationOlmecThe Olmec were the first major Pre-Columbian civilization in Mexico. They lived in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, in the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco....
(possibly the oldest MesoamericaMesoamericaMesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...
n script) - Phaistos DiscPhaistos DiscThe Phaistos Disc is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the Greek island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age . It is about 15 cm in diameter and covered on both sides with a spiral of stamped symbols...
(a unique text, very possibly not writing) - Proto-ElamiteProto-ElamiteThe Proto-Elamite period is the time of ca. 3200 BC to 2700 BC when Susa, the later capital of the Elamites, began to receive influence from the cultures of the Iranian plateau. In archaeological terms this corresponds to the late Banesh period...
ElamElamElam was an ancient civilization located in what is now southwest Iran. Elam was centered in the far west and the southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province, as well as a small part of southern Iraq...
(nearly as old as Sumerian) - RongorongoRongorongoRongorongo is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing or proto-writing. It cannot be read despite numerous attempts at decipherment. Although some calendrical and what might prove to be genealogical information has been identified, not even...
Rapa NuiRapa Nui languageRapa Nui , also known as Pascuan or Pascuense, is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken on the island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island....
(perhaps a syllabary) - Proto-Sinaitic (likely an abjad)
- Zapotec ZapotecZapotec languageThe Zapotec language are a group of closely related indigenous Mesoamerican languages spoken by the Zapotec people from the southwestern-central highlands of Mexico. Present-day native speakers are estimated to number over half a million, with the majority inhabiting the state of Oaxaca....
(another old Mesoamerican script) - Banpo symbolsBanpo SymbolsThe Banpo Symbols is a name sometimes given to the 27 markings on prehistoric artifacts found in Banpo in Shaanxi, related to the Yangshao culture...
Yangshao cultureYangshao cultureThe Yangshao culture was a Neolithic culture that existed extensively along the central Yellow River in China. The Yangshao culture is dated from around 5000 BC to 3000 BC. The culture is named after Yangshao, the first excavated representative village of this culture, which was discovered in 1921...
(perhaps proto-writing) - Jiahu symbolsJiahu symbolsJiahu symbols refer to the 16 distinct markings on prehistoric artifacts found in Jiahu, a neolithic Peiligang culture site found in Henan, China, and excavated in 1999 C.E...
Peiligang culturePeiligang cultureThe Peiligang culture is a name given by archaeologists to a group of Neolithic communities in the Yi-Luo river basin in Henan Province, China. The culture existed from 7000 BC to 5000 BC. Over 70 sites have been identified with the Peiligang culture. The culture is named after the site discovered...
(perhaps proto-writing)
Undeciphered manuscripts
A number of manuscripts from comparable recent past may be written in an invented writing system, a cipher of an existing writing system or may only be a hoaxHoax
A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...
.
- Voynich manuscriptVoynich manuscriptThe Voynich manuscript, described as "the world's most mysterious manuscript", is a work which dates to the early 15th century, possibly from northern Italy. It is named after the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who purchased it in 1912....
- Rohonc Codex
- Codex SeraphinianusCodex SeraphinianusCodex Seraphinianus is a book written and illustrated by the Italian artist, architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini during thirty months, from 1976 to 1978...
- HamptoneseJames Hampton (artist)James Hampton was a janitor who secretly built a large assemblage of religious art from scavenged materials and is considered an outsider artist.-Early life:...
- Dorabella cipherDorabella CipherThe Dorabella Cipher is an enciphered letter written by Edward Elgar to Miss Dora Penny, which was accompanied by another dated July 14, 1897. Penny was never able to decipher it and its meaning remains unknown to this day....
Phonetic alphabets
This section lists alphabets used to transcribe phonetic or phonemicPhoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
sound; not to be confused with spelling alphabet
Spelling alphabet
A spelling alphabet, radio alphabet, or telephone alphabet is a set of words which are used to stand for the letters of an alphabet. Each word in the spelling alphabet typically replaces the name of the letter with which it starts...
s like the ICAO spelling alphabet.
- International Phonetic AlphabetInternational Phonetic AlphabetThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
- Deseret alphabetDeseret alphabetThe Deseret alphabet is a phonemic English spelling reform developed in the mid-19th century by the board of regents of the University of Deseret under the direction of Brigham Young, second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.In public statements, Young claimed the...
- UnifonUnifonUnifon is a phonemic orthography for English designed in the mid-1950s by Dr. John R. Malone, a Chicago economist and newspaper equipment consultant. It was developed into a teaching aid to help children acquire reading and writing skills. Like the pronunciation key in a dictionary, Unifon matches...
- Americanist phonetic notationAmericanist phonetic notationAmericanist phonetic notation is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American anthropologists and language scientists for the phonetic and phonemic transcription of Native American and European languages...
- Uralic Phonetic AlphabetUralic Phonetic AlphabetThe Uralic Phonetic Alphabet or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages...
- Shavian alphabetShavian alphabetThe Shavian alphabet is an alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonetic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of the conventional spelling. It was posthumously funded by and named after Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw...
Special alphabets
Alphabets may exist in forms other than visible symbols on a surface. Some of these are:Manual alphabets
- FingerspellingFingerspellingFingerspelling is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets , have often been used in deaf education, and have subsequently been adopted as a distinct part of a number of sign languages around the world...
For example:
- American Sign LanguageAmerican Sign LanguageAmerican Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...
- American manual alphabet
- Korean manual alphabetKorean manual alphabetThe Korean manual alphabet is used by the Deaf in South Korea who speak Korean Sign Language. It is a one-handed alphabet that mimics the shapes of the letters in hangul, and is used when signing Korean as well as being integrated into KSL.-Consonants:...
- Cued SpeechCued speechCued Speech is a system of communication used with and among deaf or hard of hearing people. It is a phonemic-based system which makes traditionally spoken languages accessible by using a small number of handshapes in different locations near the mouth , as a supplement to lipreading...
Long-Distance Signaling
- International maritime signal flagsInternational maritime signal flagsThe system of international maritime signal flags is one system of flag signals representing individual letters of the alphabet in signals to or from ships...
- Morse codeMorse codeMorse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
- Flag semaphoreFlag semaphoreSemaphore Flags is the system for conveying information at a distance by means of visual signals with hand-held flags, rods, disks, paddles, or occasionally bare or gloved hands. Information is encoded by the position of the flags; it is read when the flag is in a fixed position...
- Optical telegraphy
Alternative alphabets
- Gregg ShorthandGregg ShorthandGregg shorthand is a form of stenography that was invented by John Robert Gregg in 1888. Like cursive longhand, it is completely based on elliptical figures and lines that bisect them. Gregg shorthand is the most popular form of pen stenography in the United States and its Spanish adaptation is...
- Initial Teaching AlphabetInitial Teaching AlphabetThe Initial Teaching Alphabet was developed by Sir James Pitman in the early 1960s...
- Pitman ShorthandPitman ShorthandPitman shorthand is a system of shorthand for the English language developed by Englishman Sir Isaac Pitman , who first presented it in 1837. Like most systems of shorthand, it is a phonetic system; the symbols do not represent letters, but rather sounds, and words are, for the most part, written...
- QuikscriptQuikscriptQuikscript is an alphabet specifically designed for the English language. Quikscript replaces traditional English orthography, which uses the Latin alphabet, with completely new letters. It is phonemically regular, compact, and comfortably and quickly written...
Fictional writing systems
- Ath (alphabet)
- Aurebesh
- CirthCirthThe Cirth are the letters of an semi-artificial script which was invented by J. R. R. Tolkien for the constructed languages he devised and used in his works. The initial C in Cirth is pronounced as a K, never as an S....
- D'ni
- Goa'uld
- HymmnosAr tonelico: Melody of ElemiaAr tonelico: Melody of Elemia, released in Japan as is a PlayStation 2 console role-playing game produced by Banpresto and Gust. There were other media releases based on the game, including the comic Ar tonelico -arpeggio-, the OVA Ar tonelico, and several drama CDs.The story begins on the...
- KlingonKlingon writing systemsKlingon alphabets is fictional alphabet used in the Star Trek movies and television shows. The alien Klingons use their own alphabets to write the Klingon language....
- On Beyond Zebra!On Beyond Zebra!On Beyond Zebra! is an illustrated children's book by Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. This book fits into the genre of literary nonsense. The young narrator, not content with the confines of the ordinary alphabet, invents additional letters beyond Z, with a fantastic creature...
- SaratiSaratiSarati is an artificial script created by J. R. R. Tolkien. According to Tolkien's mythology, the Sarati alphabet was invented by the Elf Rúmil of Tirion.- External history :...
- TengwarTengwarThe Tengwar are an artificial script created by J. R. R. Tolkien. In his fictional universe of Middle-earth, the tengwar were invented by the Elf Fëanor, and used first to write the Elven tongues: Quenya, Telerin, and also Valarin. Later a great number of languages of Middle-earth were written...
- UnownUnownis a Pokémon species in Nintendo and Game Freak's Pokémon franchise. Created by Ken Sugimori, Unown first appeared in the video games Pokémon Gold and Silver and in subsequent sequels, later appearing in various merchandise, spinoff titles and animated and printed adaptations of the franchise...
See also
- Artificial script
- List of languages by first written accounts
- Grapheme
- Writing systemWriting systemA writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...
- UnicodeUnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
- List of languages by writing system
- List of inventors of writing systems
- List of ISO 15924 codes
- Omniglot: a guide to writing systems
- Ancient Scripts: Home:(Site with some introduction to different writing systems and group them into origins/types/families/regions/timeline/A to Z)
- Michael EversonMichael EversonMichael Everson is a linguist, script encoder, typesetter, and font designer. His central area of expertise is with writing systems of the world, specifically in the representation of these systems in formats for computer and digital media...
's Alphabets of Europe - Deseret Alphabet