This is a list of writing systems (or scripts), classified according to some common distinguishing features. There are at least 3,866 languages that make use of an established writing system.[1]
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.
[A]lphabetic | [L]ogographic, [S]yllabic and [A]rtificially created | Abjad | Abugida |
---|---|---|---|
Cyrillic Armenian | Hanzi[L] / Pinyin (Latin script) [A]Chosŏn'gŭl/Hangul[A] / Hanja[L] | Hebrew | South Indic Thaana |
aFeatural-alphabetic.b Limited.
Writing systems of the world today.
- 2Logographic writing systems
- 3Syllabaries
- 4Segmental scripts
- 4.2True alphabets
- 4.3Alphasyllabary
- 8Other
- 8.2Special alphabets
Pictographic/ideographic writing systems[edit]
Writing systems |
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Types |
|
Related topics |
Ideographic scripts (in which graphemes are ideograms 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.[2] 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.
- Aztec – Nahuatl – Although some proper nouns have phonetic components.[3]
- Mixtec – Mixtec
- Dongba – Naxi – Although this is often supplemented with syllabic Geba script.
- Ersu Shābā – Ersu
- Míkmaq hieroglyphic writing – Míkmaq – Does have phonetic components, however.
- Nsibidi – Ekoi, Efik/Ibibio, Igbo
- Testerian – used for missionary work in Mexico
- Other Mesoamerican writing systems with the exception of Maya Hieroglyphs.
There are also symbol systems used to represent things other than language, or to represent constructed languages. Some of these are
- Blissymbols – A constructed ideographic script used primarily in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC).
- iConji – A constructed ideographic script used primarily in social networking
- Emoji - Used to communicate feelings and thoughts on the world wide web
- A wide variety of notations
Linear B and Asemic writing also incorporate ideograms.
Logographic writing systems[edit]
In logographic writing systems, glyphs represent words or morphemes (meaningful components of words, as in mean-ing-ful), rather than phonetic elements.
Note that no logographic script is composed solely of logograms. All contain graphemes that 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 complements to a logogram (used to specify the sound of a logogram that 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, whereas 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[edit]
- Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, and Demotic – the writing systems of Ancient Egypt
- Egyptian hieroglyphs (List)
Syllable-based logographies[edit]
- Anatolian hieroglyphs – Luwian
- Cuneiform – Sumerian, Akkadian, other Semitic languages, Elamite, Hittite, Luwian, Hurrian, and Urartian
- Chinese characters (Hanzi) – Chinese, Japanese (Kanji), Korean (Hanja (occasionally used)), Vietnamese (Chu Nom (obsolete)), ZhuangSawndip
- Oracle bone script – Old Chinese
- Bronzeware script – Old Chinese
- Khitan large script – Khitan
- Tangut script – Tangut
- Eghap (or Bagam) script
- Mayan – Chorti, Yucatec, and other Classic Maya languages
- Yi (classical) – various Yi/Lolo languages
- Shui script – Shui language
Syllabaries[edit]
In a syllabary, graphemes represent syllables or moras. (Note that the 19th-century term syllabics usually referred to abugidas rather than true syllabaries.)
- Afaka – Ndyuka
- Alaska script – Central Yup'ik
- Cherokee – Cherokee
- Cypriot – Arcadocypriot Greek
- Geba – Naxi
- Iban – Iban
- Kana – Japanese (although primarily based on moras rather than syllables)
- Kikakui – Mende
- Kpelle – Kpelle
- Linear B – Mycenean Greek
- Loma – Loma
- Nü Shu – Chinese
- Nwagu Aneke script – Igbo
- Vai – Vai
- Woleaian – Woleaian (a likely syllabary)
- Yi (modern) – various Yi/Lolo languages
Semi-syllabaries: Partly syllabic, partly alphabetic scripts[edit]
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 syllabary for the stop consonants 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').
- Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries – Paleohispanic languages
- Tartessian or Southwestern script – Tartessian or Southwestern language
- Southeastern Iberian script – Iberian language
- Northeastern Iberian script – Iberian language
- Celtiberian script – Celtiberian language
- Old Persian Cuneiform – Old Persian
- Bopomofo (a.k.a. Zhuyin Fuhao) – phonetic script for the different varieties of Chinese.
- Eskayan – Eskayan language (a syllabary apparently based on an alphabet; some alphabetic characteristics remain)
- Bamum script – Bamum (a defective syllabary, with alphabetic principles used to fill the gaps)
Segmental scripts[edit]
A segmental script has graphemes which represent the phonemes (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[edit]
An abjad is a segmental script containing symbols for consonants only, or where vowels are optionally written with diacritics ('pointing') or only written word-initially.
- Arabic – Arabic, Azeri, Punjabi, Baluchi, Kashmiri, Pashto, Persian, Kurdish (vowels obligatory), Sindhi, Uighur (vowels obligatory), Urdu, and the languages of many other peoples of the Near East
- Hebrew – Hebrew, Yiddish, and other Jewish languages
- Jawi – Arabic, Malay
- Nabataean – the Nabataeans of Petra
- Pahlavi script – Middle Persian
- Phoenician – Phoenician and other Canaanite languages
- Sabaean
- South Arabian – Sabaean, Qatabanic, Himyaritic, and Hadhramautic
- Samaritan (Old Hebrew) – Aramaic, Arabic, and Hebrew
- Syriac – Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, Syriac, Turoyo and other Neo-Aramaic languages
- Tifinagh – Tuareg
- Ugaritic – Ugaritic, Hurrian
True alphabets[edit]
A true alphabet contains separate letters (not diacritic marks) for both consonants and vowels.
Linear nonfeatural alphabets[edit]
Writing systems used in countries of Europe.[note 1]Greek
Latin
Cyrillic
Armenian
Linear alphabets are composed of lines on a surface, such as ink on paper.
- Adlam – Fula
- Armenian – Armenian
- Avestan alphabet – Avestan
- Avoiuli – Raga
- Beitha Kukju – Albanian
- Borama – Somali
- Carian – Carian
- Caucasian Albanian alphabet – Old Udi language
- Coorgi–Cox alphabet – Kodava
- Coptic – Egyptian
- Cyrillic – Eastern Slavic languages (Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian), eastern South Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian), the other languages of Russia, Kazakh language, Kyrgyz language, Tajik language, Mongolian language. Azerbaijani, Turkmen, and Uzbek are officially written in Latin (in their respective countries) but have a considerable number of users writing in Cyrillic. See Languages using Cyrillic.
- Elbasan – Albanian
- Fraser – Lisu
- Georgian – Georgian and other Kartvelian languages
- Glagolitic – Old Church Slavonic
- Gothic – Gothic
- Greek – Greek
- Kaddare – Somali
- Latin AKA Roman – originally Latin language; most current western and central European languages, Turkic languages, sub-Saharan African languages, indigenous languages of the Americas, languages of maritime Southeast Asia and languages of Oceania use developments of it. Languages using a non-Latin writing system are generally also equipped with Romanization for transliteration or secondary use.
- Manchu – Manchu
- Mandaic – Mandaic dialect of Aramaic
- Mongolian – Mongolian
- Neo-Tifinagh – Tamazight
- N'Ko – Maninka language, Bambara, Dyula language
- Ogham (Irish pronunciation: [oːm]) – Gaelic, Britannic, Pictish
- Old Hungarian (in Hungarian magyar rovásírás or székely-magyar rovásírás) – Hungarian
- Old Italic – a family of connected alphabets for the Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Messapian, South Picene, Raetic, Venetic, Lepontic, Camunic languages
- Old Permic (also called Abur) – Komi
- Old Turkic – Turkic
- Old Uyghur alphabet – Uyghur
- Osmanya – Somali
- Runic alphabet – Germanic languages
- Ol Cemet' – Santali
- Tai Lue – Lue
- Uyghur Arabic alphabet – Uyghur
- Vah – Bassa
- Zaghawa – Zaghawa
Featural linear alphabets[edit]
A featural script has elements that indicate the components of articulation, such as bilabial consonants, fricatives, or back vowels. Scripts differ in how many features they indicate.
- Chosŏn'gŭl/Hangul – Korean
- Osage – Osage
- Physioalphabet (a physiological alphabet)
- Tengwar (a fictional script)
- Visible Speech (a phonetic script)
- Stokoe notation for American Sign Language
- SignWriting for sign languages
- IsiBheqe SoHlamvu for Southern Bantu languages
Linear alphabets arranged into syllabic blocks[edit]
- Hangul – Korean
- Great Lakes Algonquian syllabics – Fox, Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, Ojibwe
- IsiBheqe SoHlamvu – Southern Bantu languages
Manual alphabets[edit]
Manual alphabets are frequently found as parts of sign languages. They are not used for writing per se, but for spelling out words while signing.
- American manual alphabet (used with slight modification in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Paraguay, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand)
- British manual alphabet (used in some of the Commonwealth of Nations, such as Australia and New Zealand)
- Ethiopian manual alphabet (an abugida)
- Icelandic manual alphabet (also used in Denmark)
- Indian manual alphabet (a true alphabet?; used in Devanagari and Gujarati areas)
- International manual alphabet (used in Germany, Austria, Norway, Finland)
- Iranian manual alphabet (an abjad; also used in Egypt)
- Israeli manual alphabet (an abjad)
- Russian manual alphabet (also used in Bulgaria and ex-Soviet states)
- Spanish manual alphabet (Madrid)
Other non-linear alphabets[edit]
These are other alphabets composed of something other than lines on a surface.
- Braille (Unified) – 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 (American) (defunct)
- New York Point – a defunct alternative to Braille
- International maritime signal flags (both alphabetic and ideographic)
- Morse code (International) – a trinary code of dashes, dots, and silence, whether transmitted by electricity, light, or sound) representing characters in the Latin alphabet.
- American Morse code (defunct)
- Optical telegraphy (defunct)
- Flag semaphore – (made by moving hand-held flags)
Alphasyllabary[edit]
An abugida, or alphasyllabary, is a segmental script in which vowel sounds are denoted by diacritical marks or other systematic modification of the consonants. 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 alphasyllabary regardless of whether the vowels look like diacritics or full letters. The vast majority of alphasyllabaries are found from India to Southeast Asia and belong historically to the Brāhmī family. The term abugida is derived from the first characters of the abugida in Ge'ez: አ (A) ቡ (bu) ጊ (gi) ዳ (da) — (compare with alphabet). Unlike abjads, the diacritical marks and systemic modifications of the consonants are not optional.
Terracotta with white slip, 4 1/16 in. Paul Getty Museum, 96.AD.164. (, Greek, 400–200 B.C. Plautus comedy.
Alphasyllabary of the Brāhmī family[edit]
A Palaung manuscript written in a Brahmic abugida
- Brahmi – Sanskrit, Prakrit,
- Batak – Toba and other Batak languages
- Baybayin – Formerly used for Ilocano, Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Tagalog, Bikol languages, Visayan languages, and possibly other Philippine languages
- Bengali[4] - Sanskrit, Bengali, Assamese, Meithei, Bishnupriya Manipuri, also for Khasi, Sylheti, Kokborok and Hajong and formerly for Bodo, Karbi and Mising
- Burmese – Burmese, Karen, Pwo, Mon, and Shan
- Dehong – Dehong Dai
- Devanagari – Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi, Nepali, and many other languages of northern India
- Grantha- Sanskrit
- Gujarati – Gujarati, Kutchi, Vasavi, Sanskrit, Avestan
- Gurmukhi script – Punjabi
- Kannada – Kannada, Tulu, Konkani, Kodava
- Leke – Eastern Pwo, Western Pwo, and Karen
- Lontara’ – Buginese, Makassar, and Mandar
- Marchen - Zhang-Zhung
- Modi – Marathi
- Multani – Saraiki
- Nandinagari – Sanskrit
- Newar – Nepal Bhasa, Sanskrit
- Phags-pa – Mongolian, Chinese, and other languages of the Yuan DynastyMongol Empire
- Ranjana – Nepal Bhasa, Sanskrit
- Sharada - Sanskrit
- Siddham -used to write Sanskrit
- Syloti Nagri – Sylheti
- Tagbanwa – Aborlan, Calamian, and Central Tagbanwa languages and other languages of Palawan
- Tai Tham – Khün, and Northern Thai
- Tamil - Tamil, Kanikkaran, Badaga, Irula, Paniya, Sanskrit (Grantha), Saurashtra
- Tigalari – Sanskrit, Tulu
- Tirhuta – Maithili
- Zhang zhung scripts
Other abugidas[edit]
- Canadian Aboriginal syllabics – Cree syllabics (for Cree), Inuktitut syllabics (for Inuktitut), and other variants for Ojibwe, Carrier, Blackfoot, and other languages of Canada (Based on Devanagari. refer to origins).
- Ethiopic – Amharic, Ge’ez, Tigrigna
- Kharoṣṭhī – Gandhari, Sanskrit
- Meroitic – Meroë
- Pollard script – Miao
- Thaana – Dhivehi
Final consonant-diacritic abugidas[edit]
In at least one abugida, not only the vowel but any syllable-final consonant is written with a diacritic. For example, representing [o] with an under-ring, and final [k] with an over-cross, [sok] would be written as s̥̽.
- Róng – Lepcha
Vowel-based abugidas[edit]
In a few 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.
- Japanese Braille – Japanese
- Pahawh Hmong – Hmong
List of writing scripts by adoption[edit]
Name of script | Type | Number of characters | Population actively using (in millions) | Languages associated with | Regions with predominant usage |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Latin Latin | Alphabet | 23 (classical)[5] | over 6120[note 2] | Latin and Romance languages (Italian, French, Franco-Provençal, Occitan, Catalan, Portuguese, Galician, Spanish, Rhaeto-Romance languages, Sardinian and Romanian), Germanic languages (English, Dutch, German, Nordic languages), Chinese (Mandarin Pinyin), Austronesian languages (Indonesian, Filipino, Malay, Polynesian languages), West and SouthwestSlavic languages (including Polish), Niger-Congo languages (including Swahili, Yoruba, and Zulu), Turkish, Somali, Albanian, Vietnamese, Hungarian, Maltese, Finnic (including Estonian and Finnish) and Sami languages, others | Worldwide |
Chinese 汉字 漢字 | Logographic | >50,000[6] | 1340[note 3] | Mandarin, Yue, Wu, Gan, Min, Hakka, Xiang, Jin, Pinghua, Huizhou and other Chinese languages (Chinese characters), Japanese (Kanji), Korean (Hanja),[note 4]Vietnamese (Chu Nom), Zhuang (Sawndip), Okinawan (Okinawan), Mulam | China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia (Chinese Malaysians), Japan, South Korea, Indonesia (Chinese Indonesians), Hong Kong |
Zhuyin Fuhao (a.k.a. Bopomofo) ㄅㄆㄇㄈ ㄓㄨㄧㄣ ㄈㄨˊㄏㄠˋ | Alphabet, Semisyllabary | 37 (plus four tone marks) | 1340[note 5] | A phonetic transcription system used in Taiwan for Mandarin Chinese, studied mainly by schoolchildren. | Taiwan |
Devanagari देवनागरी | Abugida | 44[7] | 820+[note 6] | Angika, Awadhi, Bhili, Bhojpuri, Bodo, Chhattisgarhi, Dogri, Haryanvi, Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Magahi, Maithili, Marathi, Mundari, Nepali, Newar, Pali, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, others | India (native in Hindi Belt, Goa, Maharashtra), Nepal |
Arabic العربية | Abjad | 28[8] | 660+ | Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Balochi, Malayan (Jawi), Acehnese (Jawi), Uyghur, Kazakh (in China), Kurdish, Azeri (in Iran), Javanese (Pegon), Sundanese (Pegon), others | Middle East and North Africa, Pakistan, China (Xinjiang), India (a few states), Brunei (co-official with Latin), Malaysia, Indonesia (religious uses only) |
Bengali|[9] বাংলা | Abugida | 28[10] | 300[11] | Sanskrit, Bengali, Assamese, Kokborok, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Khasi,[12]Meitei Manipuri, Hajong, Chakma,[13]Maithili (historical use), Angika (historical use), Sylheti and others. | Bangladesh, and India (West Bengal, Bihar, Mizoram, Jharkhand, Tripura, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Andaman and Nicobar Islands) |
Cyrillic Кириллица | Alphabet | 33[14] | 250 | Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, Belarusian, others | Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Mongolia, the Russian Far East |
Kana かな カナ | Syllabary | 46[15] | 120[note 7] | Japanese, Okinawan, Ainu, Palauan, other Japonic languages | Japan |
Javanese ꦗꦮ | Abugida | 53[16] | 80[note 8] | Javanese, Cirebonese, Madurese, Sundanese | Indonesia (Central Java, East Java, Special Region of Yogyakarta, Cirebon, Cirebon Regency, Indramayu Regency), Javanese diaspora |
Chosŏn'gŭl/Hangul 한글 조선글 | Alphabet, featural | 24[17] | 78.7[note 9] | Korean, Cia-Cia, Jeju | North Korea, South Korea, and Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of China, Indonesia (Baubau) |
Telugu తెలుగు | Abugida | 60[18] | 74[note 10] | Telugu, Sanskrit, Gondi | Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Puducherry (India) |
Tamil தமிழ் | Abugida | 246[19] | 70[note 11][note 12] | Tamil, Kanikkaran, Badaga, Irula, Paniya, Sanskrit, Saurashtra | Tamil Nadu (India), Puducherry (India), Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Mauritius |
Gujarati ગુજરાતી | Abugida | 47[20] | 48[note 13] | Gujarati, Kutchi, Avestan, Bhili, Bhilori, Gamit, Chowdhary, Kukna, Bhili, Varli, Vasavi | India,[note 14]Pakistan[note 15] |
Kannada ಕನ್ನಡ | Abugida | 51 (or 50 or 49)[21] | 45[note 16] | Kannada, Tulu, Kodava, Badaga, Beary, Sanketi, Konkani, Sanskrit | Karnataka (India) |
Burmese မြန်မာ | Abugida | 26[22] | 39[note 17] | Burmese, Pali, Sanskrit | Myanmar |
Malayalam മലയാളം | Abugida | 26[23] | 38[note 18] | Malayalam, Sanskrit, Paniya, Betta Kurumba, Ravula | Kerala, Puducherry (India) |
Thai ไทย | Abugida | 68[24] | 38[note 19] | Thai, Northern Thai, Southern Thai, Northern Khmer, and Isan, Kelantan-Pattani Malay, Pali, Sanskrit, others | Thailand |
Sundanese ᮞᮥᮔ᮪ᮓ | Abugida | 44[25] | 38[note 20] | Sundanese, Bantenese, Baduy | West Java and Banten (Indonesia) |
Gurmukhi ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ | Abugida | 35[26] | 22[note 21] | Sanskrit, Punjabi, Sant Bhasha, Sindhi | Punjab (India) |
Odia ଉତ୍କଳ | Abugida | 64[27] | 21[note 22] | Odia, others | Odisha (India) |
Ge'ez ግዕዝ | Abugida | 30[28] | 18[note 23] | Ethiopian Semitic languages, Blin, Meʻen, Oromo, Anuak | Ethiopia, Eritrea |
Sinhala සිංහල | Abugida | 58[29] | 14.4[note 24] | Sinhala, Vedda | Sri Lanka |
Hebrew עברית | Abjad | 22[30] | 14[note 25] | Hebrew, Yiddish, other Jewish languages | Israel |
Greek Ελληνικό | Alphabet | 24[31] | 13.4 | Greek, others | Greece, Cyprus, Southern Albania; worldwide for mathematical and scientific purposes |
Armenian Հայոց | Alphabet | 39[32] | 12 | Armenian, Lomavren | Armenia |
Khmer ខ្មែរ | Abugida | 35[33] | 11.4[note 26] | Khmer, Pali, others | Cambodia |
Batak ᯅᯖᯂ᯲ | Abugida | 20 (Toba Batak)[34] | 8.5 | Batak languages | North Sumatra (Indonesia) |
Lontara ᨒᨚᨈᨑ | Abugida | 23[35] | 7.6 | Buginese, Makassar, Mandar | Indonesia (South Sulawesi and West Sulawesi) |
Balinese ᬩᬮᬶ | Abugida | 18 (basic)[36] | 6 | Balinese and Sasak (modified) | Indonesia (Bali and Lombok, East Nusa Tenggara) |
Tibetan བོད་ | Abugida | 30[37] | 5 | Tibetan, Dzongkha, Ladakhi, Sikkimese, Balti, Tamang, Sherpa, Yolmo, Tshangla | Tibet Autonomous Region of China, Bhutan, and India (Jammu and Kashmir, Sikkim, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh) |
Georgian ქართული | Alphabet | 33[38] | 4.5 | Georgian and other Kartvelian languages | Georgia |
Modern Yi ꆈꌠ | Syllabary | 1165[39] | 4 | Nuosu Yi, other Yi languages | Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture and Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture of China |
Lao ລາວ | Abugida | 26[40] | 2[note 27] | Lao, Isan, others Laos | |
Mongolian ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ | Alphabet | 26[41] | 2 | Mongolian, Manchu (Manchu), Evenki (experimentally) | China (Inner Mongolia) |
Tifinagh ⵜⵉⴼⵉⵏⴰⵖ | Abjad | 33[42] | 1 | Berber languages | North Africa |
Tai Le ᥖᥭᥰᥘᥫᥴ | Abugida | 35[43] | 0.72 | Tai Nüa | Yunnan (China) |
New Tai Lue ᦑᦟᦹᧉ | Abugida | 83[44] | 0.55 | Tai Lü | Yunnan (China) |
Syriac ܣܘܪܝܬ | Abjad | 22[45] | 0.4 | Syriac, Aramaic, Neo-Aramaic, Suriyani Malayalam, nothers | West Asia |
Thaana ދިވެހި | Abugida | 24[46] | 0.35 | Maldivian | Maldives |
Inuktitut ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ | Abugida | 14 (each of the 14 consonants has 6 modes depending on the vowel)[47] | 0.035 | Inuktitut, other Inuit languages | Canada (North of Tree Line) |
Cherokee ᏣᎳᎩ | Syllabary | 86[48] | 0.02 | Cherokee | United States |
Undeciphered systems that may be writing[edit]
These systems have not been deciphered. In some cases, such as Meroitic, 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 is undetermined.
- Byblos syllabary – the city of Byblos
- Isthmian (apparently logosyllabic)
- Indus – Indus Valley Civilization
- Quipu – Inca Empire (possibly numerical only)
- Khitan small script – Khitan
- Linear A (a syllabary) – Minoan
- Mixtec – Mixtec (perhaps pictographic)
- Olmec – Olmec civilization (possibly the oldest Mesoamerican script)
- Phaistos Disc (a unique text, very possibly not writing)
- Proto-Elamite – Elam (nearly as old as Sumerian)
- Rongorongo – Rapa Nui (perhaps a syllabary)
- Proto-Sinaitic (likely an abjad)
- Zapotec – Zapotec (another old Mesoamerican script)
- Banpo symbols – Yangshao culture (perhaps proto-writing)
- Jiahu symbols – Peiligang culture (perhaps proto-writing)
Undeciphered manuscripts[edit]
A number of manuscripts exist which may be written in an invented writing system, a cipher of an existing writing system or may only be a hoax.
Other[edit]
Asemic writing is generally meaningless, though it sometimes contains ideograms or pictograms.
Phonetic alphabets[edit]
This section lists alphabets used to transcribe phonetic or phonemic sound; not to be confused with spelling alphabets like the ICAO spelling alphabet.
Special alphabets[edit]
Alphabets may exist in forms other than visible symbols on a surface. Some of these are:
Tactile alphabets[edit]
Alternative alphabets[edit]
Fictional writing systems[edit]
- Heptapod B, used by the extraterrestrials in the film Arrival
- Tengwar, used to write Quenya, Sindarin and other of J.R.R. Tolkien's Elvish languages
- The 'Tennobet', used to write the Orokin language in the Digital ExtremesMMOWarframe
- Unnamed script used in Puella Magi Madoka Magica
- Utopian, in Thomas More's Utopia
- The written language in Hunter x Hunter
- Ancient Language used in the Tellius World of the series Fire Emblem
For animal use[edit]
- Yerkish uses 'lexigrams' to communicate with non-human primates.
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]
- ^This maps shows languages official in the respective countries; if a country has an independent breakaway republic, both languages are shown. Moldova's sole official language is Romanian (Latin-based), but the unrecognized de facto independent republic of Transnistria uses three Cyrillic-based languages: Ukrainian, Russian, and Moldovan. Georgia's official languages are Georgian and Abkhazian (in Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia), the sparsely recognized de facto independent republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia use Cyrillic-based languages: Both republics use Russian. Additionally, Abkhazia also uses Abkhaz, and South Ossetia uses Ossetian. Azerbaijan's sole official language is Azerbaijani, but the unrecognized de facto independent republic of Nagorno-Karabakh uses Armenian as its sole language. Additionally, Serbia's sole official language is Cyrillic Serbian, but within the country, Latin script for Serbian is also widely used.
- ^Difficult to determine, as it is used to write a very large number of languages with varying literacy rates among them.
- ^Based on sum of 1.335 billion PRC citizens with a 92% literacy rate (1.22 billion), and 120 million Japanese Kanji users with a near-100% literacy rate.
- ^Hanja has been banned in North Korea and is increasingly being phased out in South Korea. It is mainly used in official documents, newspapers, books, and signs to identify Chinese roots to Korean words.
- ^Based on sum of 1.335 billion PRC citizens with a 92% literacy rate (1.22 billion), and 120 million Japanese Kanji users with a near-100% literacy rate.
- ^January 2017 estimate. 2001 census reported that languages with more than 1 million native speakers that use Devanagari had a total number of native speakers of 631.5 million. The January 2017 population estimate of India is 1.30 times that of the 2001 census, and it was estimated that the native speakers of Devanagari languages increased by the same proportion, i.e. to 820.95 million. This was multiplied by the literacy rate 74.04% as reported by the 2011 census. Since the literacy rate has increased since 2011 a + sign was added to this figure.
- ^Based on Japanese population of roughly 120 million and a literacy rate near 100%.
- ^Since around 1945 Javanese script has largely been supplanted by Latin script to write Javanese.
- ^Excluding figures related to North Korea, which does not publish literacy rates.
- ^Based on 67% literacy rate in Andhra Pradesh (according to government estimate) and 74 million Telugu speakers.
- ^Tamil Nadu has an estimated 80% literacy rate and about 72 million Tamil speakers.
- ^Sri Lanka Tamil and Moor population that use Tamil script. 92% literacy
- ^Based on 60.38 million population and 79.31% literacy rate of Gujarat
- ^An estimated 46 million Gujaratis live in India with 11 Gujarati-script newspapers in circulation.
- ^An estimated 1 million Gujaratis live in Pakistan with 2 Gujarati-script newspapers in circulation.
- ^Based on 46 million speakers of Kannada language, Tulu, Konkani, Kodava, Badaga in a state with a 75.6 literacy rate. url=https://updateox.com/india/26-populated-cities-karnataka-population-sex-ratio-literacy
- ^Based on 42 million speakers of Burmese in a country (Myanmar) with a 92% literacy rate.
- ^Spoken by 38 million people in the world.
- ^Based on 40 million proficient speakers in a country with a 94% literacy rate.
- ^Sundanese is predominantly written using the Latin alphabet. The number of people able to read the Sundanese script is considerably lower than 38 million.
- ^Based on 29 million Eastern Punjabi speakers and 75% literacy rate
- ^Based on 32 million speakers of Odia in a country with a 65% literacy.
- ^Based on 30 million native speakers of Amharic and Tigrinya and a 60% literacy rate.
- ^Based on 15.6 million Sinhala language speakers and a 92% literacy rate in Sri Lanka.
- ^Hebrew has over 9 million speakers, including other Jewish languages and Jewish population outside Israel, where the Hebrew script is used by Jews for religious purposes worldwide.
- ^Based on 15 million Khmer speakers with 73.6% literacy rate.
- ^Based on 3 million speakers of Lao in a country with a 73% literacy.
References[edit]
- ^'How many languages in the world are unwritten?'. 9 May 2013.
- ^Halliday, M.A.K., Spoken and written language, Deakin University Press, 1985, p.19
- ^Smith, Mike (1997). The Aztecs. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN0-631-23015-7.
- ^'ScriptSource - Bengali (Bangla)'. www.scriptsource.org. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
- ^'Latin alphabet'. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'BBC - Languages - Real Chinese - Mini-guides - Chinese characters'. www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'The Devanagari Script'. www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Arabic alphabet'. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'ScriptSource - Bengali (Bangla)'. www.scriptsource.org. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
- ^'Bengali Alphabet | LEARN101.ORG'. learn101.org. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Bengali alphabet, pronunciation and language'. www.omniglot.com.
- ^'Scripts of Khasi'.
- ^'Chakma'.
- ^'Russian Alphabet - (Cyrillic Alphabet) - Letter Names'. masterrussian.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Katakana | Japanese-Lesson.com'. japanese-lesson.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'The Top Ten Most Beautiful Alphabets'. Language Trainers USA Blog. 2015-11-19. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Korean Language Information - Korean alphabet, Korean grammar, Korean pronunciation rules and more'. www.lingvozone.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^Academy, PACASA Language (2016-11-26). 'Telugu Letters & Alphabet'. Medium. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Learning Tamil Letters'. kartiklearningtamil.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Gujarati'. www.languagesgulper.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'ಕನ್ನಡ ವರ್ಣಮಾಲೆ - Narnimar'. sites.google.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Burmese Alphabet | LEARN101.ORG'. learn101.org. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Malayalam Alphabet | LEARN101.ORG'. learn101.org. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Thai language, alphabet and pronunciation'. www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Sundanese script summary'. r12a.github.io. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^Sukhm; Sukhm, ir Khalsa; Sikhism, ir Kaur is an educator who has written hundreds of articles on topics relating to. 'Consonants of Gurmukhi Alphabet (35 Akhar) Illustrated'. ThoughtCo. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Oriya Alphabet | LEARN101.ORG'. learn101.org. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Ge'ez (Ethiopic) syllabic script and the Amharic language'. www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^Options, B. T. (2013-11-30). 'A Unique alphabet with 58 letters'. Explore Sri Lanka - Once discovered, you must explore.... Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'The Hebrew Alphabet'. www.hebrew4christians.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Greek Alphabet - BusinessBalls.com'. www.businessballs.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^armeniagogo.comhttps://armeniagogo.com/armenian-alphabet-letters/. Retrieved 2019-04-03.Missing or empty
|title=
(help) - ^'Which Language Has the Largest Alphabet?'. WorldAtlas. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Batak script and languages'. www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Lontara'. www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Balinese alphabet, language and pronunciation'. www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^Ilina, Anastasiia. '10 Things You Didn't Know About the Tibetan Language'. Culture Trip. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'The Georgian alphabet'. www.caucasusstudies.se. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Yi language, script and pronunciation'. www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Lao alphabet'. www.thailao.net. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Mongolian alphabet'. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Tifinagh alphabet and Berber languages'. www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Revised proposal for encoding the Tai Le script in the BMP of the UCS'(PDF).
- ^'New Tai Lue'(PDF).
- ^'Aramaic alphabet'. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Thaana (Maldivian) script'. www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Inuktitut language, syllabary and pronunciation'. www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
- ^'Letters in the Cherokee syllabary'. www.aboutnorthgeorgia.com. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
External links[edit]
- Ancient Scripts: Home: Site with some introduction to different writing systems and group them into (origins/types/families/regions/timeline/A to Z)
- Michael Everson's Alphabets of Europe
- ScriptSource - a dynamic, collaborative reference to the writing systems of the world
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_writing_systems&oldid=899583938'
Smashing Newsletter
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The beauty of typography has no borders. While most of us work with the familiar Latin alphabet, international projects usually require quite extensive knowledge about less familiar writing systems from around the world. The aesthetics and structure of such designs can be strongly related to the shape and legibility of the letterforms, so learning about international writing systems will certainly help you create more attractive and engaging Web designs.
Pick any language you like: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, maybe Nepali? Each is based on a different writing system, which makes it interesting to figure out how they work. Today, we’ll cover five categories of writing systems. This may sound tedious and academic, but it’s not. If you take the time to understand them, you’ll find that they all give us something special. We’ve tried to present at least one special feature of each language from which you can draw inspiration and apply to your own typography work. We’ll cover: East Asian writing systems, Arabic and Indic scripts (Brahmic).
![Alphabet letters in different languages Alphabet letters in different languages](/uploads/1/2/3/7/123742498/844280557.jpg)
You may also want to check out the following Smashing Magazine articles:
We will cover Cyrillic, Hebrew and other writing systems in the second part of this post.
East Asian Writing Systems
Obviously, the Chinese uses Chinese characters (where they are known as hanzi). But Chinese characters are also used in various forms in Japanese (where they are known as kanji) and Korean (hanja). In this section, we will look at four East Asian writing systems: Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese.
Chinese Characters
Chinese characters are symbols that do not comprise an alphabet. This writing system, in which each character generally represents either a complete one-syllable word or a single-syllable part of a word, is called logo-syllabic. This also means that each character has its own pronunciation, and there is no way to guess it. Add to this the fact that being literate in Chinese requires memorizing about 4,000 characters and you’ve got quite a language to learn. Fortunately for us, we don’t need to learn Chinese in order to appreciate the beauty of its writing.
Because many commonly used Chinese characters have 10 to 30 strokes, certain stroke orders have been recommended to ensure speed, accuracy and legibility in composition. So, when learning a character, one has to learn the order in which it is written, and the sequence has general rules, such as: top to bottom, left to right, horizontal before vertical, middle before sides, left-falling before right-falling, outside before inside, inside before enclosing strokes.
The Eight Principles of Yong
The strokes in Chinese characters fall into eight main categories: horizontal (一), vertical (丨), left-falling (丿), right-falling (丶), rising, dot (、), hook (亅) and turning (乛, 乚, 乙, etc.). The “Eight Principles of Yong” outlines how to write these strokes, which are common in Chinese characters and can all be found in the character for “yǒng” (永, which translates as “forever” or “permanence”). It was believed that practicing these principles frequently as a budding calligrapher would ensure beauty in one’s writing.
Four Treasures of the Study
“Four treasures of the study” is an expression that refers to the brush, ink, paper and ink stone used in Chinese and other East Asian calligraphic traditions. The head of the brush can be made of the hair (or feather) of a variety of animals, including wolf, rabbit, deer, chicken, duck, goat, pig and tiger. The Chinese and Japanese also have a tradition of making a brush from the hair of a newborn, as a once-in-a-lifetime souvenir for the child.
Seal and Seal Paste
The artist usually completes their work of calligraphy by adding their seal at the very end, in red ink. The seal serves as a signature and is usually done in an old style.
Horizontal and Vertical Writing
Many East Asian scripts (such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean) can be written horizontally or vertically, because they consist mainly of disconnected syllabic units, each conforming to an imaginary square frame. Traditionally, Chinese is written in vertical columns from top to bottom; the first column on the right side of the page, and the text starting on the left.
In modern times, using a Western layout of horizontal rows running from left to right and being read from top to bottom has become more popular. Signs are particularly challenging for written Chinese, because they can be written either left to right or right to left (the latter being more of a traditional layout, with each “column” being one character high), as well as top to bottom.
Different Styles
In Chinese calligraphy, Chinese characters can be written in five major styles. These styles are intrinsic to the history of Chinese script.
Seal script is the oldest style and continues to be widely practiced, although most people today cannot read it. It is considered an ancient script, generally not used outside of calligraphy or carved seals, hence the name.
In clerical script, characters are generally “flat” in appearance. They are wider than the seal script and the modern standard script, both of which tend to be taller than wider. Some versions of clerical are square, and others are wider. Compared to seal script, forms are strikingly rectilinear; but some curvature and influence from seal script remains.
The semi-cursive script approximates normal handwriting, in which strokes and (more rarely) characters are allowed to run into one another. In writing in the semi-cursive script, the brush leaves the paper less often than with the regular script. Characters appear less angular and rounder. The characters are also bolder.
The cursive script is a fully cursive script, with drastic simplifications and ligatures, requiring specialized knowledge to be read. Entire characters may be written without lifting the brush from the paper at all, and characters frequently flow into one another. Strokes are modified or eliminated completely to facilitate smooth writing and create a beautiful abstract appearance. Characters are highly rounded and soft in appearance, with a noticeable lack of angular lines.
The regular script is one of the last major calligraphic styles to develop from a neatly written early-period semi-cursive form of clerical script. As the name suggests, this script is “regular,” with each stroke written slowly and carefully, the brush being lifted from the paper and all strokes distinct from each other.
Japanese
A rather different writing system is Japanese, which is syllabic, meaning that each symbol represents (or approximates) a syllable, combining to form words. No full-fledged script for written Japanese existed until the development of Man’yōgana (万葉仮名), an ancient writing system that employs Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. The Japanese appropriated Kanji (derived from their Chinese readings) for their phonetic value rather than semantic value.
The modern kana systems, Hiragana and Katakana, are simplifications and systemizations of Man’yōgana. Thus, the modern Japanese writing system uses three main scripts: Kanji, which is used for nouns and stems of adjectives and verbs; Hiragana, which is used for native Japanese words and written in the highly cursive flowing sōsho style; and Katakana, which is used for foreign borrowings and was developed by Buddhist monks as a shorthand. In Japan, cursive script has traditionally been considered suitable for women and was called women’s script (女手 or onnade), while clerical style has been considered suitable for men and was called men’s script (男手 or otokode).
The three scripts are often mixed single sentences.
As we can see, the modern kana systems are simplifications of Man’yōgana. It is interesting to see how they have been simplified.
Development of hiragana from man’yōgana.
Katakana, with man’yōgana equivalents. (The segments of man’yōgana adapted into katakana are highlighted.)
Korean Squares
Korean is itself a very different writing system. It uses Hangul, a “featural” writing system. The shapes of the letters are not arbitrary but encode phonological features of the phonemes they represent.
Hangul has existed since the middle of the 15th century (approximately 1440). But tradition prevailed, and scholars continued to use Classical Chinese as the literary language, and it was not until 1945 that Hangul became popular in Korea.
Jamo (자모; 字母), or natsori (낱소리), are the units that make up the Hangul alphabet. “Ja” means letter or character, and “mo” means mother, suggesting that the jamo are the building blocks of the script. When writing out words, signs are grouped by syllables into squares. The layout of signs inside the square depends greatly on the syllable structure as well as which vowels are used.
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We won’t get into the detailed rules, but here is an example for inspiration:
Vietnamese Rotation
The Vietnamese writing system in use today (called Chữ Quốc Ngữ) is adapted from the Latin alphabet, with some digraphs (i.e. pairs of characters used to write individual phonemes) and nine additional diacritics (accent marks) for tones and certain letters. Over the course of several centuries—from 1527, when Portuguese Christian missionaries began using the Latin alphabet to transcribe the Vietnamese language, to the early 20th century, when the French colonial administration made the Latin-based alphabet official—the Chinese character-based writing systems for Vietnamese gradually became limited to a small number of scholars and specialists.
However, the Chinese philosophy still exerts a strong influence. The stylized work above is by painter Tran Dat, who introduced a harmony between the shapes of Chinese and Vietnamese characters. If you rotate the first image 90 degrees counter-clockwise, you can make out the Vietnamese words. It is meant to be displayed vertically so that it appears as ancient Chinese text at first.
Arabic
Here we’ll explore the beauty of Arabic, which has many styles and techniques. The Arabic alphabet was developed from the Nabataean script (which was itself derived from the Aramaic script) and contains a total of 28 letter. These 28 letters come from 18 basics shapes, to which one, two or three dots are added, above or below the letter. Arabic uses a writing system that we haven’t seen yet: an abjad, which is basically an alphabet that doesn’t have any vowels—the reader must supply them.
Contextual Shaping
The shape of these letters changes depending on their position in the word (isolated, initial, medial or final). Here, for example, is the letter kaaf:
Diacritics
The Arabic script is an impure abjad, though. Short consonants and long vowels are represented by letters, but short vowels and long consonants are not generally indicated in writing. The script includes numerous diacritics, which serve to point out consonants in modern Arabic. These are nice and worth taking a look at.
Alif as a Unit of Proportion
Geometric principles and rules of proportion play an essential role in Arabic calligraphy. They govern the first letter of the alphabet, the alif, which is basically a straight vertical stroke.
- The height of the alif varies from 3 to 12 dots, depending on the calligrapher and style of script.
- The width of the alif (the dot) is a square impression formed by pressing the tip of the reed pen to paper. Its appearance depends on how the pen was cut and the pressure exerted by the fingers.
- The imaginary circle, which uses alif as its diameter, is a circle within which all Arabic letters could fit.
Different Styles
Arabic script has many different styles—over 100 in fact. But there are six primary styles, which can generally be distinguished as being either geometric (basically Kufic and its variations) and cursive (Naskh, Ruq’ah, Thuluth, etc.).
![Letter Letter](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/9b/10/d5/9b10d52a58274b8ed6d53cdb132abd2c.jpg)
Kufi (or Kufic) is noted for its proportional measurements, angularity and squareness.
Tuluth means “one third,” referring to the proportion of the pen relative to an earlier style called Tumaar. It is notable for its cursive letters and use as an ornamental script.
Nasakh, meaning “copy,” is one of the earliest scripts with a comprehensive system of proportion. It is notable for its clarity for reading and writing and was used to copy the Qur’an.
Ta’liq means “hanging,” in reference to the shape of the letters. It is a cursive script developed by the Persians in the early part of the 9th century AD. It is also called Farsi (or Persian).
Diwani was developed by the Ottomans from the Ta’liq style. This style became a favorite script in the Ottoman chancellery, and its name is derived from the word “Diwan,” which means “royal court.” Diwani is distinguished by the complexity of lines within letters and the close juxtaposition of letters within words.
Riq’a is a style that evolved from Nasakh and Thuluth. It is notable for the simplicity and small movements that are required to write in it, thanks to its short horizontal stems, which is why it is the most common script for everyday use. It is considered a step up from the Nasakh script, which children are taught first. In later grades, students are introduced to Riq’a.
Teardrop-Shaped Composition
Here is an animation showing the composition of the Al Jazeera logo:
Bi-Directionnality
When left-to-right text is mixed with right-to-left in the same paragraph, each text should be written in its own direction, known as “bi-directional text.”
Material Used
In case you want to try, you’ll want to know what material to use. There is a lot of typical tools, such as brush pens, scissors, a knife to cut the pens and an ink pot. But the traditional instrument of the Arabic calligrapher is the qalam, a pen made of dried reed or bamboo. “The traditional way to hold the pen,” wrote Safadi in 1987, “is with middle finger, forefinger and thumb well spaced out along the [pen’s] shaft. Only the lightest possible pressure is applied.”
As for the ink, you have many options: black and brown (often used because their intensity and consistency can be varied greatly) as well as yellow, red, blue, white, silver and gold. The important thing is that the greater strokes of the composition be very dynamic in their effect.
A Few Techniques
The development of Arabic calligraphy led to several decorative styles that were intended to accommodate special needs or tastes and to please or impress others. Here are a few outstanding techniques and scripts.
Gulzar is defined by Safadi (1979) in Islamic calligraphy as the technique of filling the area within the outlines of relatively large letters with various ornamental devices, including floral designs, geometric patterns, hunting scenes, portraits, small script and other motifs. Gulzar is often used in composite calligraphy, where it is also surrounded by decorative units and calligraphic panels.
Maraya or muthanna is the technique of mirror writing, where the composition on the left reflects the composition on the right.
Tughra is a unique calligraphic device that is used as a royal seal. The nishanghi or tughrakesh is the only scribe trained to write tughra. The emblems became quite ornate and were particularly favored by Ottoman officialdom.
In zoomorphic calligraphy, the words are manipulated into the shape of a human figure, bird, animal or object.
Sini
Sini is a Chinese Islamic calligraphic form for the Arabic script. It can refer to any type of Chinese Islamic calligraphy but is commonly used to refer to one with thick tapered effects, much like Chinese calligraphy. It is used extensively in eastern China, one of whose famous Sini calligraphers is Hajji Noor Deen.
Perso-Arabic Script: Nasta’liq Script
The predominant style in Persian calligraphy has traditionally been the Nasta’liq script. Although it is sometimes used to write Arabic-language text (where it is known as Ta’li, with Farsi used mainly for titles and headings), it has always been more popular in Persian, Turkic, and South Asian spheres. It is extensively practiced as a form of art in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Nasta’liq means “suspended,” which is a good way to describe the way each letter in a word is suspended from the previous one (i.e. lower, rather than on the same level).
The Perso-Arabic script is exclusively cursive. That is, the majority of letters in a word connect to each other. This feature is also included on computers. Unconnected letters are not widely accepted. In Perso-Arabic, as in Arabic, words are written from right to left, while numbers are written from left to right. To represent non-Arabic sounds, new letters were created by adding dots, lines and other shapes to existing letters.
Indic Scripts (Brahmic)
The Indic or Brahmic scripts are the most extensive family of writing systems that we haven’t looked at yet: abugidas. An abugidas is a segmental writing system which is based on consonants and in which vowel notation is obligatory but secondary. This contrasts with an alphabet proper (in which vowels have a status equal to that of consonants) and with an abjad (in which vowel marking is absent or optional).
Indic scripts are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of Central and East Asia (e.g. Hindi, Sanskrit, Konkani, Marathi, Nepali, Sindhi and Sherpa). They are so widespread that they vary a lot, but Devanagari is the most important one.
Devanagari Ligatures and Matra
Hindi and Nepali are both written in the Devanāgarī (देवनागरी) alphabet. Devanagari is a compound word with two roots: deva, meaning “deity,” and nagari, meaning “city.” Together, they imply a script that is both religious and urban or sophisticated.
To represent sounds that are foreign to Indic phonology, additional letters have been coined by choosing an existing Devanagari letter that represents a similar sound and adding a dot (called a nukta) beneath it. It is written from left to right, lacks distinct letter cases and is recognizable by a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the letters and linking them together.
In addition, a few other diacritics are used at the end of words, such as the dots illustrated below and the diagonal line, called virama, drawn under the last letter of a word if it is a consonant.
One interesting aspect of Brahmic and in particular of Devanagari here is the horizontal line used for successive consonants that lack a vowel between them. They may physically join together as a “conjunct,” or ligature, a process called samyoga (meaning “yoked together” in Sanskrit). Sometimes, the individual letters can still be discerned, while at other times the conjunction creates new shapes.
Here is a close-up of a nice ligature, the ddhrya ligature:
A letter in Devanagari has the default vowel of /a/. To indicate the same consonant followed by another vowel, additional strokes are added to the consonant letter. These strokes are called matras, or dependant forms of the vowel.
Thai Stacking Diactritics
The writing system of Thai is based on Pali, Sanskrit and Indian concepts, and many Mon and Khmer words have entered the language.
To represent a vowel other than the inherent one, extra strokes or marks are added around the basic letter. Thai has its own system of diacritics derived from Indian numerals, which denote different tones. Interestingly, like many non-Roman scripts, it has stacking diacritics.
Tibetan Mantras
Image credit
The form of Tibetan letters is based on an Indic alphabet of the mid-7th century. The orthography has not altered since the most important orthographic standardization, which took place during the early 9th century. The spoken language continues to change. As a result, in all modern Tibetan dialects, there is a great divergence of reading from the spelling.
The Tibetan script has 30 consonants, otherwise known as radicals. Syllables are separated by a tseg ་, and because many Tibetan words are monosyllabic, this mark often functions almost as a space.
As in other parts of East Asia, nobles, high lamas and persons of high rank were expected to have strong abilities in calligraphy. But the Tibetan script was done using a reed pen instead of a brush. As for a mantra, it is a sound, syllable, word or group of words that is considered capable of “creating transformation.”
The use of mantras is widespread throughout spiritual movements that are based on or off-shoots of practices from earlier Eastern traditions and religions. The mantras used in Tibetan Buddhist practice are in Sanskrit, to preserve the original mantras. Visualizations and other practices are usually done in the Tibetan language.
Vajrasattva mantra in Tibetan.
Summary
So what should you take away from this article? We have seen that Arabic and Chinese calligraphy have many different scripts variations. From geometric to cursive to regular script, there is no such thing as one calligraphic style for a language.
Sometimes there is even no such thing as one script per language. This is why Japanese is interesting: it is written in three different scripts that mix nicely. The construction of the Korean language is also fascinating: characters are grouped into squares that create syllables. Writing systems are ultimately diverse in construction, which makes them so interesting.
Many languages also have various components that can be used in our typography. Arabic and Thai, among many others, have a large system of diacritics. Arabic has a decorative aspect. Ligatures are directly related to our Latin alphabet but can be quite elaborated in such scripts as Devanagari.
You could do a lot to spice up your own designs. Did you catch the red Chinese seal, which contrasts with the usual black ink. Have you thought of rotating your fonts to give them a whole new look, as Vietnamese calligraphers do? What about the Arabic teardrop-shaped writing? If you missed all of this, you have no choice but to scroll back up and take a closer look.
Bonus: How to Integrate These Languages on a Website?
Working with foreign languages in international design projects can get a bit tricky. Obviously, studying the specifics of the language that you are supposed to work with will help you better anticipate user’s needs and avoid embarassing problems or misunderstandings. Tilt.its.psu.edu presents general guidelines for integration of various international languages in websites.
Licensing
This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia articles (”Hindi”,”Chinese Script Styles”, “Four Treasures of the Study”, “Hangul”); it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA.
Alphabet, set of graphs, or characters, used to represent the phonemic structure of a language. In most alphabets the characters are arranged in a definite order, or sequence (e.g., A, B, C, etc.).
ancient Middle East: The alphabet
Of all the accomplishments of the ancient Middle East, the invention of the alphabet is probably the greatest. While pre-alphabetic systems…
In the usual case, each alphabetic character represents either a consonant or a vowel rather than a syllable or a group of consonants and vowels. As a result, the number of characters required can be held to a relative few. A language that has 30 consonant sounds and five vowels, for example, needs at most only 35 separate letters. In a syllabary, on the other hand, the same language would require 30 × 5 symbols to represent each possible consonant-vowel syllable (e.g., separate forms for ba, be, bi, bo, bu; da, de, di; and so on) and an additional five symbols for the vowels, thereby making a total of 155 individual characters. Both syllabaries and alphabets are phonographic symbolizations; that is, they represent the sounds of words rather than units of meaning.
The word alphabet, from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet--alpha and beta—was first used, in its Latin form, alphabetum, by Tertullian (2nd–3rd century ce), a Latin ecclesiastical writer and Church Father, and by St. Jerome. The Classical Greeks customarily used the plural of to gramma (“the letter”); the later form alphabētos was probably adopted under Latin influence.
Theories of the origin of the alphabet
The evolution of the alphabet involved two important achievements. The first was the step taken by a group of Semitic-speaking people, perhaps the Phoenicians, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean between 1700 and 1500 bce. This was the invention of a consonantal writing system known as North Semitic. The second was the invention, by the Greeks, of characters for representing vowels. This step occurred between 800 and 700 bce. While some scholars consider the Semitic writing system an unvocalized syllabary and the Greek system the true alphabet, both are treated here as forms of the alphabet.
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Over the centuries, various theories have been advanced to explain the origin of alphabetic writing, and, since Classical times, the problem has been a matter of serious study. The Greeks and Romans considered five different peoples as the possible inventors of the alphabet—the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Cretans, and Hebrews. Among modern theories are some that are not very different from those of ancient days. Every country situated in or more or less near the eastern Mediterranean has been singled out for the honour. Egyptian writing, cuneiform, Cretan, hieroglyphic Hittite, the Cypriot syllabary, and other scripts have all been called prototypes of the alphabet. The Egyptian theory actually subdivides into three separate theories, according to whether the Egyptian hieroglyphic, the hieratic, or the demotic script is regarded as the true parent of alphabetic writing. Similarly, the idea that cuneiform was the precursor of the alphabet may also be subdivided into those singling out Sumerian, Babylonian, or Assyrian cuneiform.
Among the various other theories concerning the alphabet are the hypotheses that the alphabet was taken by the Philistines from Crete to Palestine, that the various ancient scripts of the Mediterranean countries developed from prehistoric geometric symbols employed throughout the Mediterranean area from the earliest times, and that the proto-Sinaitic inscriptions (discovered since 1905 in the Sinai Peninsula) represent a stage of writing intermediate between the Egyptian hieroglyphics and the North Semitic alphabet. Another hypothesis, the Ugaritic theory, evolved after an epoch-making discovery in 1929 (and the years following) at the site of the ancient Ugarit, on the Syrian coast opposite the most easterly cape of Cyprus. Thousands of clay tablets were found there, documents of inestimable value in many fields of research (including epigraphy, philology, and the history of religion). Dating from the 15th and 14th centuries bce, they were written in a cuneiform alphabet of 30 letters.
The Early Canaanite theory is based on several undeciphered inscriptions also discovered since 1929 at various Palestinian sites; the writings belong in part to c. 1700 bce and are thus the earliest preserved documents in an alphabetic writing.
Despite the conflict in theories, scholars are generally agreed that, for about 200 years before the middle of the 2nd millennium bce, alphabet making was in the air in the Syro-Palestinian region. It is idle to speculate on the meaning of the various discoveries referred to. That they manifest closely related efforts is certain; what the exact relationship among these efforts was, and what their relationship with the North Semitic alphabet was, cannot be said with certainty.
It can, however, be ascertained that the period from 1730 to 1580 bce in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, during which there was an uprooting of established cultural and ethnic patterns in the Fertile Crescent, provided conditions favourable to the conception of an alphabetic script, a kind of writing that would be more accessible to larger groups of people, in contrast to the scripts of the old states of Mesopotamia and Egypt, which were confined largely to the priestly class. In default of other direct evidence, it is reasonable to suppose that the actual prototype of the alphabet was not very different from the writing of the earliest North Semitic inscriptions now extant, which belong to the last two or three centuries of the 2nd millennium bce. The North Semitic alphabet was so constant for many centuries that it is impossible to think that there had been any material changes in the preceding two to three centuries. Moreover, the North Semitic languages, based as they are on a consonantal root (i.e., a system in which the vowels serve mainly to indicate grammatical or similar changes), were clearly suitable for the creation of a consonantal alphabet.
The inventor or inventors of the alphabet were, no doubt, influenced by Egyptian writing—perhaps also by other scripts. Indeed, it is probable that those who invented the alphabet were acquainted with most of the scripts current in the eastern Mediterranean lands at the time. It is now generally agreed that the originators belonged to the Northwest Semitic linguistic group, which includes the ancient Canaanites, Phoenicians, and Hebrews.
Originally, graphs were perhaps “motivated” pictorial signs that were subsequently used to represent the initial sound of the name of the pictured object. The North Semitic alphabet remained almost unaltered for many centuries. If the signs’ external form (which, it must be emphasized, had no particular significance) is ignored and only their phonetic value, number, and order are considered, the modern Hebrew alphabet may be regarded as a continuation of the original alphabet created more than 3,500 years ago. The Hebrew order of the letters seems to be the oldest. The earliest evidence that the Hebrew alphabet was learned systematically was left in the form of a schoolboy’s scribbling on the vertical face of the upper step of a staircase leading up to the palace at Tel Lakhish, in southern Israel. It includes the scratching of the first five letters of the early Hebrew alphabet in their conventional order, and it belongs to the 8th or 7th century bce.
Development and diffusion of alphabets
At the end of the 2nd millennium bce, with the political decay of the great nations of the Bronze Age—the Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, and Cretans—a new historical world began. In Syria and Palestine, the geographical centre of the Fertile Crescent, three nations—Israel, Phoenicia, and Aram—played an increasingly important political role. To the south of the Fertile Crescent, the Sabaeans, a South Arabian people (also Semites, though South Semites), attained a position of wealth and importance as commercial intermediaries between the East and the Mediterranean. To the west, seeds were sown among the peoples who later constituted the nation of Hellas—the Greeks. As a result, an alphabet developed with four main branches: (1) the so-called Canaanite, or main branch, subdivided into Early Hebrew and Phoenician varieties; (2) the Aramaic branch; (3) the South Semitic, or Sabaean, branch; and (4) the Greek alphabet, which became the progenitor of the Western alphabets, including the Etruscan and the Latin. The Canaanite and Aramaic branches constitute the North Semitic main branch.
The Canaanite alphabet
The two Canaanite branches may be subdivided into several secondary branches. First, Early Hebrew had three secondary branches—Moabite, Edomite, and Ammonite—and two offshoots—the script of Jewish coins and the Samaritan script, still in use today for liturgical purposes only. Second, Phoenician can be divided into Phoenician proper and “colonial” Phoenician. Out of the latter developed the Punic and neo-Punic scripts and probably also the Libyan and Iberian scripts.
The term Early Hebrew is used to distinguish this branch from the later so-called Square Hebrew. The Early Hebrew alphabet had already begun to acquire its distinctive character by the 11th century bce. It was used officially until the 6th century bce and lingered on for several centuries more. In a stylized form it was used on Jewish coins from 135 bce to 132–135 ce. The most ancient example of Early Hebrew writing is that of the Gezer Calendar of the period of Saul or David (i.e., c. 1000 bce). The oldest extant example of the Early Hebrew ABCs is the 8th–7th-century-bce schoolboy graffito mentioned above. A cursive style reached its climax in the inscriptions at Tel Lakhish, dating from the beginning of the 6th century bce. The Leviticus and other small Early Hebrew fragments found in the Dead Sea caves, which are probably from the 3rd century bce, are the only remains of what is considered to be the Early Hebrew book, or literary, hand. (See alsoDead Sea Scrolls.)
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the Phoenician alphabet in the history of writing. The earliest definitely readable inscription in the North Semitic alphabet is the so-called Ahiram inscription found at Byblos in Phoenicia (now Lebanon), which probably dates from the 11th century bce. There is, however, no doubt that the Phoenician use of the North Semitic alphabet went farther back. By being adopted and then adapted by the Greeks, the North Semitic, or Phoenician, alphabet became the direct ancestor of all Western alphabets. Only very few inscriptions have been found in Phoenicia proper. This rarity of indigenous documents is in contrast to the numbers of Phoenician inscriptions found elsewhere—on Cyprus, Malta, Sicily, and Sardinia, and in Greece, North Africa, Marseille, Spain, and other places.
The Aramaic alphabet
The adaptation of the North Semitic alphabet to the Aramaic language took place at some time in the 10th century bce, when Aramaic was spoken in several petty kingdoms in northern Mesopotamia and Syria, the most important of them being Dammeshek (Damascus). The process of the reestablishment of the Assyrian empire and its hegemony over a good part of the Middle East began in the 9th century. One after another, the Aramaean states gave way under Assyrian onslaught. Dammeshek, the last survivor, fell in 732 bce. The end of Aramaean political independence marked the beginning of Aramaean cultural and economic supremacy in western Asia. The transplantation of masses of Aramaeans by the Assyrians, a political measure designed to break up military alliances, bore remarkable fruit. By the end of the 8th century bce, the use of the Aramaic language and alphabet had become very widespread in Assyria itself; by the end of the following century all of Syria and a large part of Mesopotamia had become thoroughly Aramaized.
On the whole, the few early Aramaic inscriptions that have been found belong to the 9th, 8th, and 7th centuries bce. Inscriptions from the 6th and later centuries are more numerous; the increase reflects the rapid spread of the Aramaic alphabet throughout the Middle East. Numerous Aramaic papyri and ostraca (inscribed pottery fragments) have been found in Egypt; the earliest of these can be dated to c. 515 bce, while the most famous are the Elephantine papyri, containing information of a religious and economic nature about a 5th-century Hebrew military colony in Egypt. Aramaic inscriptions have been found in northern Arabia, Palestine, Lycia, Cappadocia, Lydia, Cilicia, Assyria, and as far afield as Greece, Afghanistan, and India.
Almost as if by prearrangement, all of the alphabetic scripts west of Syria seem to have been derived, directly or indirectly, from the Canaanite alphabet, whereas the hundreds of alphabetic writings of the East apparently have sprung from the offshoots of the Aramaic alphabet. On the whole, the direct and indirect descendants of the Aramaic alphabet can be divided into two main groups: the scripts employed for Semitic languages and those adapted to non-Semitic tongues. With regard to the Semitic offshoots, six separate alphabets may be discerned: the Hebrew, the Nabataean-Sinaitic-Arabic, the Palmyrene, the Syriac-Nestorian, the Mandaean, and the Manichaean. Some of these alphabets became links between the Aramaic alphabet and the numerous scripts used for the non-Semitic languages of Central, South, and Southeast Asia.
Among these scripts, which were directly or mainly indirectly adapted to non-Semitic languages from the Aramaic alphabet, are: (1) the Persian (Iranian) scripts known as Pahlavi, which were used for such writings as sacred (pre-Islamic) Persian literature; (2) Sogdian, a script and language that constituted the lingua franca of Central Asia in the second half of the 1st millennium ce; (3) Kök Turki, a script used from the 6th to the 8th century ce by Turkish tribes living in the southern part of central Siberia, in northwestern Mongolia, and in northeastern Turkistan (this alphabet was the prototype of the early Hungarian alphabet); (4) the alphabet of the Uighur, a Turkic-speaking people who lived in Mongolia and eastern Turkistan in the early 13th century; this script was adapted, with Tibetan influence, and adopted as the writing of the Mongol empire (the so-called Kalika script); (5) the early scripts of the Mongols, including Kalmyk, Buryat, Mongolian proper, and the allied Manchu alphabet.
The Aramaic alphabet was probably also the prototype of the Brahmi script of India, a script that became the parent of nearly all Indian writings. Derived from the Aramaic alphabet, it came into being in northwest India. The Armenian alphabet, created by St. Mesrop Mashtots in the early 5th century ce, was also based on the Aramaic alphabet.
The South Semitic alphabet
The South Semitic, or Sabaean, branch remained within the confines of the Arabian Peninsula for most of its history. It was in use at the beginning of the 1st millennium bce. The most that can be said about its origins is that it neither developed from nor directly depended upon the North Semitic alphabet. It may have been derived, ultimately, from the proto-Sinaitic script, with some influence from the North Semitic. Offshoots from the South Semitic branch include the Minaean, Himyaritic, Qatabanic, and Hadhramautic alphabets in southern Arabia, and Thamudene, Dedanite, and Safaitic alphabets in the northern part of the peninsula. Numerous inscriptions in these alphabets are the principal source for the study of those once-flourishing kingdoms, including Sabaʾ (the biblical Sheba), relegated by the rise of Islam to the backwaters of history.
The Sabaean offshoot, a graceful and elegant script consisting of 29 letters, spread into Africa, where it became the progenitor of the Ethiopic alphabet; this in turn gave birth to the modern Amharic, Tigré, Tigrinya, and other alphabets of modern Ethiopia and Eritrea. These are the only South Semitic scripts still in use today.
The Greek alphabet
As in so many other things, the importance of the ancient Greeks in the history of the alphabet is paramount. All of the alphabets in use in European languages today are directly or indirectly related to the Greek. The Greek achievement was to provide representations for vowel sounds. Consonants plus vowels made a writing system that was both economical and unambiguous. The true alphabetic system has remained for 3,000 years, with only slight modifications, an unparalleled vehicle of expression and communication in and among the most diverse nationalities and languages. The Greek alphabet, created early in the 1st millennium bce, spread in various directions in Asia Minor, Egypt, Italy, and other places, but far and away its most important descendants (in terms of widespread use) were the Latin (through Etruscan) and Cyrillic alphabets.
Theories explaining diffusion
There is no complete agreement among scholars as to how or why certain alphabets have come to dominate much of the world. Some believe that diffusion is explained by the efficiency of the orthography; the Greek alphabet, capable of representing unambiguously a full range of meanings, was adopted throughout western Europe. Others hold that the alphabet follows the flag; that is, that the diffusion of an alphabet results from political and military conquests by the people who use it. Still others hold that the alphabet follows trade or religion. A few examples may illustrate the point: (1) The Latin language and script were carried by Roman legionaries and imperial officers to all parts of the vast Roman Empire, particularly to the regions that were not Hellenized. In later centuries, however, churchmen and missionaries carried the Latin language and script still farther afield. The ascendancy of Latin led to the adoption of the Latin (Roman) alphabet by a large majority of nations; it became used for tongues of the most diverse linguistic groups, not only in Europe but in all other parts of the world as well. (2) Two alphabets, the Cyrillic and the Latin, are used for writing Slavic languages. Cyrillic is used by those Slavic peoples who accepted their religion from Byzantium, whereas Roman Christianity brought the use of the Latin alphabet to the Poles, Lusatians, Wends, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, and Croats. (3) The Arabic alphabet is, after Latin, the most generally used in Asia and Africa. The rise of Islam in the 7th century ce and the tremendous Islamic expansion and conquest carried the Islamic holy book, the Qurʾān, written in the Arabic alphabet, over a vast area: the Middle East, North and Central Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and even southern Europe. The Arabic alphabet was, therefore, adapted to Semitic and Indo-European forms of speech, to Tatar-Turkish, Iranian, and Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) tongues, and to several African languages. (4) The movement eastward from India of the Indian Brahmi-Buddhist alphabets was much more peaceful than that of the Arabic alphabet. These offshoots, which took root in Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, were again the result of the spreading of a religion—Buddhism—in this case by missionaries.
Quick Facts
- key people
- related topics
Below is a list of languages sorted by writing system (by alphabetical order).
- 9Brahmic family and derivatives
- 14Cyrillic script
- 28Mesoamerican scripts
- 29Mongolian and related scripts
- 30Munda scripts
- 42Old Turkic script
Adlam alphabet[edit]
English syllabary[edit]
- Ndyuka (on occasion)
Anatolian alphabets[edit]
- Anatolian languages (extinct)
Arabic script[edit]
- Acehnese (on occasion, after the colonization by the Dutch)
- Adyghe (before 1927 and Latin script (1927–1938), now uses the Cyrillic script)
- Afrikaans (briefly, in the early 19th century)
- Arabic
and many other varieties of Arabic.
- Afar (Kabir Hamza script)
- Azerbaijani (Iran only)
- Belarusian (on occasion)
- Bengali language(Historical)(along with Bengali,Sylheti,Assamese script)
- Bosnian (formerly)
- Burushaski (on occasion)
- Chechen (alongside the Georgian script)
- Chinese in the Arabic-derived Xiao'erjing alphabet
- Crimean Tatar (before 1928)
- Dungan (now uses the Cyrillic script)
- Dogri (also uses Devanāgarī in India and Takri script)
- French in Algeria and other parts of North Africa during the French colonial period.
- Fulani (on occasion)
- Greek (on occasion in certain areas of Greece and Anatolia)
- Harari (originally , now uses the Ge'ez script)
- Hausa (on occasion)
- Ingush (at the beginning of the 20th century)
- Javanese (see Pegon alphabet)
- Judeo-Arabic languages
- Judaeo-Spanish (until the 20th century)
- Kanuri (on occasion)
- Karakalpak (before 1928)
- Kazakh in China
- Kurdish (Iran and Iraq)
- Lak (now uses the Cyrillic script)
- Madurese (with the Pegon alphabet)
- Malagasy (until the 19th century)
- Malay (14th – 20th century)
- Marwari (Pakistan)
- Mozarabic (now extinct)
- Nobiin (algongside Latin script)
- Ngai (before 1928 and Latin (1928–1938) , now uses the Cyrillic)
- Ottoman Turkish (extinct)
- Persian (Iran and Afghanistan)
- Punjabi (Pakistan)
- Rohingya (also uses the Latin script)
- Somali (see Wadaad's writing)
- Spanish (before 16th century, a.k.a. Aljamiado)
- Swahili (on occasion)
- Tajik (formerly)
- Turkish (formerly)
- Turkmen (on occasion in Iran and Afghanistan).
- Uzbek (Formerly, Now Cyrillic and Latin are more commonly used)
- Wolof known as Wolofal
- Yoruba in the 17th century with the Ajami script
- Zarma (formerly)
Aramaic alphabet[edit]
- Arabic (seeGarshuni)
- Turoyo (also has new Latin-based script)
Armenian script[edit]
ASL-phabet[edit]
- Various sign languages
- American Sign Language (also si5s, SignWriting, and Stokoe notation)
Borama script[edit]
Brahmic family and derivatives[edit]
![Alphabet in every language Alphabet in every language](/uploads/1/2/3/7/123742498/437238028.jpg)
Bengali script[edit]
- Assamese alphabet:
- Bengali alphabet
- Khasi (also written in Latin)
- Bodo (formerly)
- Karbi (formerly)
- Mising (formerly)
- Mithilakshara/Tirhuta (Maithili alphabet)
- Anga Lipi
Balinese script[edit]
Baybayin script[edit]
- Ilokano (formerly)
- Pangasinan (formerly)
- Tagalog (formerly)
- Bikol language (formerly)
- Visayan languages (formerly)
Buhid script[edit]
Chakma[edit]
Devanagari[edit]
- Sindhi (also written in Arabic)
- Konkani (also written in Latin and Kannada)
- Kashmiri (also written in Arabic)
Thaana script[edit]
- Divehi (Maldivian)
Gujarati script[edit]
Gurmukhi script[edit]
- Punjabi (also written in Shahmukhi, a variant of the Arabic script)
Hanunó'o script[edit]
Javanese script (Hanacaraka)[edit]
Kaithi script[edit]
Kannada script[edit]
- Konkani (In Karnataka)
- Badaga(formerly)
- Beary bashe (also written in Latin)
Khmer script[edit]
Khojki[edit]
- Sindhi (formerly)
Khudawadi[edit]
- Sindhi (formerly)
Kulitan alphabet[edit]
Lao script[edit]
Leke script[edit]
Lepcha script[edit]
Limbu script[edit]
Lontara script[edit]
- Makassarese
- Buginese
- Mandar
Malayalam script[edit]
Meitei Mayek[edit]
Tirhuta/Mithilakshar[edit]
Modi[edit]
- Marathi (formerly)
Myanmar script[edit]
- Karen
Odia script[edit]
'Phags-pa script[edit]
- Chinese (formerly)
- Mongolian (formerly)
- Sanskrit (formerly)
- Tibetan (for decorative purposes)
- Uyghur (formerly)
Ranjana[edit]
Saurashtra[edit]
Sinhala script[edit]
Syloti Nagri script[edit]
- Sylheti (formerly)
Tagbanwa script[edit]
Tamil script[edit]
Telugu script[edit]
Thaana script[edit]
Thai script[edit]
Tibetan script[edit]
- Zhang-Zhung (extinct)
Canadian Aboriginal script[edit]
Caucasian Albanian alphabet[edit]
- Udi (formerly)
Cherokee script[edit]
Coptic alphabet[edit]
- Coptic language (extinct, still in use liturgically)
Cyrillic script[edit]
- Belarusian (also Latin script)
- Bosnian (also Latin script)
- Judaeo-Spanish (also Latin script)
- Kazakh (to be replaced with Latin script by 2025)
- Mongolian (also Mongolian script and Latin script)
- Montenegrin (also uses Latin script)
- Serbian (also Latin script)
- Persian (Tajikistan and Uzbekistan)
Bosnian Cyrillic alphabet (bosančica)[edit]
- Croatian (formerly)
- Bosnian (formerly)
Ge'ez script (Eritrean and Ethiopic)[edit]
- Me'en (formerly)
- Oromo (formerly)
Georgian script[edit]
- Laz (sometimes Latin)
Glagolitic alphabet[edit]
- Old Church Slavonic (extinct, still in use liturgically)
- Croatian (formerly)
Gothic alphabet[edit]
- Gothic (extinct)
Greek script[edit]
- Bactrian (extinct)
- Gaulish (extinct) – Written in both Greek and Latin scripts
- Judaeo-Spanish (also Latin script)
- Karamanli Turkish (extinct)
Chinese characters and derivatives[edit]
- Chinese
- Guanhua (Mandarin)
- Yue (Cantonese)
- Wu which includes Shanghainese
- Min which includes Taiwanese
- Jin from Mandarin
- Huizhou from Wu
- Minority languages in China
- Bai (obsolete)
- Miao (obsolete)
- Zhuang, with Zhuang logograms
- Japanese (kanji plus kana derivative)
- Korean (hanja) (used in academic texts and newspapers along with official documents)
- Vietnamese (Han-Nom) (used in historic or academic texts, or for artistic or aesthetic purposes, but in general use virtually extinct)
- Extinct languages
- Khitan, written in Khitan scripts
- Jurchen, written in Jurchen script
- Tangut, written in Tangut script
Hangul[edit]
- Cia-Cia (no longer used)
Hebrew script[edit]
- Aramaic (and other writing systems)
- Judeo-Spanish (originally Rashi script, and other writing systems)
Old Italic script[edit]
- Italic (extinct)
Kaddare script[edit]
Kana[edit]
- Japanese (plus kanji)
- Ryukyuan (plus kanji)
- Ainu slightly modified variety of katakana, which enable the ability to represent final consonants
Khitan scripts[edit]
- Khitan (extinct)
Latin script[edit]
- Afar (formerly used the Arabic script)
- Azeri (formerly used the Cyrillic script)
- Belarusian (also uses the Cyrillic script, and occasionally the Lacinka alphabet)
- Berber / Tamazight (Algeria, Morocco, Mali, Niger)
- Boholano (formerly used Baybayin)
- Bosnian (also uses the Cyrillic script)
- Cherokee (also uses the Cherokee script)
- Hausa (formerly used the Arabic script)
- Ilocano (formerly used Baybayin)
- Javanese (also uses the Javanese script)
- Judeo-Spanish (also used other scripts)
- Khasi (also uses the Bengali script)
- Kurdish (Kurmanji)
- Malay (also uses the Arabic script)
- Moldovan (also uses the Cyrillic script)
- Montenegrin (also uses the Cyrillic script)
- Nahuatl (after the Spanish conquest)
- Oromo (formerly used the Ge'ez script)
- Rohingya (formerly used the Arabic script)
- Romanian (formerly used the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet)
- Serbian (officially uses the Cyrillic script)
- Somali (formerly used the Arabic script and the Osmanya script)
- Tagalog (formerly used Baybayin)
- Tatar (formerly used the Arabic script, then Janalif, and then the Cyrillic script)
- Tunisian Arabic (also uses the Arabic script)
- Turkish (formerly used the Arabic script)
- Turkmen (formerly used the Cyrillic script)
- Turoyo (formerly used the Syriac alphabet)
- Uzbek (formerly used the Arabic script and then the Cyrillic script; the latter still in widespread use)
- Vietnamese (formerly used Han-Nom)
Mesoamerican scripts[edit]
Epi-Olmec script[edit]
- Olmec (extinct)
Maya script[edit]
(Almost extinct although still used in some areas)
- Chicomuceltec (extinct)
- Ch'olti' (extinct)
Mixtec script[edit]
(Almost extinct although still used in some areas)
Nahuat hieroglyphs[edit]
(Now uses Spanish alphabet)
Olmec script[edit]
- Olmec (extinct)
Zapotec script[edit]
Takalik Abaj and Kaminaljuyú scripts[edit]
Mongolian and related scripts[edit]
Old Uyghur alphabet[edit]
- Uyghur (formerly)
Mongolian script[edit]
- Mongolian (also Cyrillic)
Manchu script[edit]
Munda scripts[edit]
Sorang Sompeng[edit]
Ol Cemet'[edit]
Warang Citi[edit]
N'Ko script[edit]
All Language Alphabets
Naxi script[edit]
- Naxi (obsolete)
Nsibidi[edit]
Ogham[edit]
Osmanya script[edit]
Pahawh Hmong[edit]
Old Permic alphabet[edit]
- Komi (formerly)
Runic script[edit]
- Proto-Norse inscriptions
- Old Norse (also Latin script)
- Old Danish (also Latin script)
- Old English/Anglo-Saxon (also Latin script)
- Old Frisian (also Latin script)
- Old High German (also Latin script)
- Old Dutch (also Latin script)
si5s[edit]
- Various sign languages
- American Sign Language (also ASL-phabet, SignWriting, and Stokoe notation)
SignWriting[edit]
- Various sign languages
- American Sign Language (also, ASL-phabet, si5s, and Stokoe notation)
Stokoe notation[edit]
- Various sign languages
- American Sign Language (also, ASL-phabet, si5s, and SignWriting)
Old Turkic script[edit]
- Old Turkic language (extinct)
Letters In Different Languages For Tattoos
Old Hungarian alphabet[edit]
- Hungarian (revived for decorative purposes only. In use: Latin script)
Tifinagh[edit]
- Berber / Tamazight (Morocco)
Yi script[edit]
References[edit]
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Different alphabets are used over the world: Latin Alphabet Cyrillic alphabet Arabic alphabet Brahmic alphabets Mixed: Latin and Cyrilic Alphabet Mixed: Latin and Arabic Alphabet Mixed: no alphabet and other alphabet Other alphabet Non-alphabetic writing systems
Venn diagram which shows that 11 characters are common to the Greek, Latin and Russian alphabets (upper caseletters)
An alphabet is a writing system, a list of symbols for writing. The basic symbols in an alphabet are called letters. In an alphabet, each letter is a symbol for a sound or related sounds. To make the alphabet work better, more signs assist the reader: punctuation marks, spaces, standard reading direction, and so on.
The name alphabet comes from Aleph and Beth, the first two letters in the Phoenician alphabet.
This article is written with the Roman alphabet (or Latin alphabet). It was first used in Ancient Rome to write Latin. Many languages use the Latin alphabet: it is the most used alphabet today.[1]
Alphabets[change | change source]
It seems that the idea of an alphabet – a script based entirely upon sound – has been copied and adapted to suit many different languages. Although no alphabet fits its language perfectly, they are flexible enough to fit any language approximately. The alphabet was a unique invention.[2]p12
13th century calligraphy & illustration
The Roman alphabet, the Cyrillic, and a few others come from the ancient Greek alphabet, which dates back to about 1100 to 800BC.[3]p167 The Greek alphabet was probably developed from the Phoenician script, which appeared somewhat earlier, and had some similar letter-shapes.
The Phoenicians spoke a Semitic language, usually called Canaanite. The Semitic group of languages includes Arabic, Maltese, Hebrew and also Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. We do not know much about how the alphabetic idea arose, but the Phoenicians, a trading people, came up with letters which were adapted by the early Greeks to produce their alphabet. The one big difference is that the Phoenician script had no pure vowels. Arabic script has vowels which may, or may not, be shown by diacritics (small marks above or below the line).[4] The oldest Qu'ran manuscripts had no diacritics.[5]Israeli children to about the third grade use Hebrew texts with vowel 'dots' added.[6]p89
No ancient script, alphabetic or not, had pure vowels before the Greeks. The Greek alphabet even has two vowels (Eta) and Epsilon) for 'e' and two (Omega and Omicron) for 'o', to distinguish between the long and short sounds.[7] It appears that careful thought went into both the Phoenician invention and the Greek adaptation, but no details survive of either process.[8]
Semitic scripts apparently derive from Proto-Sinaitic, a script of which only 31 inscriptions (plus 17 doubtful) are known. It is thought by some researchers that the original source of this script was the Egyptian hieratic script, which by the late Middle Kingdom (about 1900BC) had added some alphabetic signs for representing the consonants of foreign names. Egyptian activity in Sinai was at its height at that time.[9] A similar idea had been suggested many years previously.[10]
Short list of alphabets[change | change source]
A list of alphabets and examples of the languages they are used for:
- Phoenician alphabet, used in ancient Phoenicia.
- Greek alphabet, used for Greek
- Roman alphabet (or Latin alphabet), most commonly used today
- Arabic alphabet, used for Arabic, Urdu and Persian
- Hebrew alphabet, used for Hebrew, Ladino (only in Israel) and Yiddish
- Devanagari, used for Hindi
- Cyrillic alphabet, which is based on the Greek alphabet, used for Russian and Bulgarian
- Hangul, used for Korean
Other writing systems[change | change source]
Other writing systems do not use letters, but they do (at least in part) represent sounds. For example, many systems represent syllables. In the past such writing systems were used by many cultures, but today they are almost only used by languages people speak in Asia. A syllabary is a system of writing that is similar to an alphabet. A syllabary uses one symbol to indicate each syllable of a word, instead of one symbol for each letter of the word. For example, a syllabary would use one symbol to mean the syllable 'ga', instead of two letters of the alphabet 'g' and 'a'.
- Japanese uses a mix of the Chinese writing (kanji) and two syllabaries called hiragana and katakana. Modern Japanese often also uses romaji, which is the Japanese syllabary written in the Roman alphabet.
- The Koreans used the Chinese writing in the past, but they created their own alphabet called hangul.
Originally, 1200 BC in the Shang dynasty, Chinese characters were mainly 'pictographic', using pictures to show words or ideas. Now only 1% of Chinese characters are pictographic.[11]p97 97% of modern characters are SP characters. These are a pair of symbols, one for meaning (semantics) and the other for pronunciation.[11]p99 In many cases the P and S parts are put together into one joint character.[12]
Chinese is not one spoken language, but many, but the same writing system is used for all. This writing system has been reformed a number of times.
Chinese is not one spoken language, but many, but the same writing system is used for all. This writing system has been reformed a number of times.
Related pages[change | change source]
References[change | change source]
- ↑The Romans largely copied their Latin alphabet from the Etruscans, who based their alphabet on the Greek one. Diringer D. 1968. The alphabet: a key to the history of mankind. 3rd ed, London: Hutchinson, vol. 1, p419. ISBN009-067640-8
- ↑Man, John 2000. Alpha Beta: how our alphabet shaped the western world. Headline, London.
- ↑Robinson. Andrew 1995. The story of writing. Thames & Hudson, London.
- ↑The modern practice in printed Arabic is not to use diacritics
- ↑enWP Arabic diacritics
- ↑Ong, Walter J. 1982. Orality and literacy: the technologising of the word. Methuen, London.
- ↑Short 'e' is ε epsilon, long 'e' is η eta. Short 'o' is o o micron; long 'o' is ω o mega. Languages other than Semitic have copied the Greek or Roman alphabets, making such changes as seem right for their particular language.
- ↑Diringer, David 1968. The alphabet: a key to the history of mankind. 2 vols, Hutchinson, London.
- ↑Sass B. 1988. The genesis of the alphabet, and its development in the 2nd millenium. Wiesbaden.
- ↑Gardiner, Alan 1916. The Egyptian origin of the alphabet. J. Egyptian Archaeology III.
- ↑ 11.011.1DeFrancis, John 1989.Visible speech: the diverse oneness of writing systems. Honolulu: University of Honolulu Press. ISBN0-8248-1207-7
- ↑Boodberg, Peter A. 1957. The Chinese script: an essay in nomenclature (the first hacaton). Bulletin of the History and Philology Academia Sinica (Taipei). 39: 115.
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