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Alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of letters — basic written symbols or graphemes — each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme,...
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Armenian alphabet
The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. It was devised by Saint Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian monk, and contained 36 letters. Two more letters, օ and ֆ, were added in the...
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ISO 15924 code:
- Armn
Braille
The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write. Braille was devised in 1821 by Louis Braille, a blind Frenchman. Each Braille character or cell is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing...
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used from:
- 1821
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic (pronounced /sɨˈrɪlɪk/) script writing system is an alphabet developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in 9th century, and used in the Slavic national languages of Belarusian, Bulgarian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, Macedonian, and Ukrainian,...
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ISO 15924 code:
- 220
Glagolitic alphabet
The Glagolitic alphabet (pronounced /ɡlæɡəˈlɪtɪk/), also known as Glagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. The name was not coined until many centuries after its creation, and comes from the Old Slavic glagolъ "utterance" (also the origin of...
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Hangul
Hangul (pronounced /ˈhɑːŋɡʊl/; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl [haːn.ɡɯl] ( listen) (in South Korea)) or Chosongul (pronounced /ʨosʌngɯl/; Korean: 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul (in North Korea)) is the native alphabet of the Korean language, as...
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ISO 15924 code:
- Hang
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic Association as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by...
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- 1888
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Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was borrowed and modified by the...
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ISO 15924 code:
- Latn
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Tifinagh
Tifinagh ( in Neo-Tifinagh, Tifinaɣ in Berber Latin alphabet, pronounced [tifinaɣ]) is an alphabetic script used by some Berber peoples, notably the Tuareg, to write their language. The Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the...
ISO 15924 code:
- Tfng
Quikscript
Quikscript (also known as the Read Alphabet and Second Shaw) is an alphabet (and phonemic orthography) specifically designed for the English language. Quikscript replaces traditional English orthography, which uses the Latin alphabet, with...
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Coptic alphabet
The Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the Greek alphabet augmented by letters borrowed from the Demotic and is the first Alphabetic Script used for the Egyptian Language. There...
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Thaana
Thaana, Taana or Tāna (written ތާނަ in Tāna script) is the modern writing system of the Divehi language spoken in the Maldives. Taana has characteristics of both an abugida (diacritic, vowel-killer strokes) and a true alphabet (all vowels are...
Phoenician alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BCE. Unlike its Canaanite predecessor, the Phoenician alphabet was non-pictorial. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a...
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ISO 15924 code:
- Phnx
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Abkhaz alphabet
The Abkhaz alphabet is an alphabet for the Abkhaz language which consists of 62 letters.
Abkhaz did not become a written language until the 19th century. Hitherto, Abkhazians, especially princes, had been using the Georgian language and alphabet for...
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Fraktur
The German word Fraktur [frakˈtuːr] ( listen) refers to a specific sub-group of blackletter typefaces. The word derives from the past participle fractus (“broken”) of Latin frangere (“to break”). As opposed to Antiqua (common) typefaces, which were...
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Finnish alphabet
The Finnish alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, and especially its Swedish extension. Officially it comprises 28 letters:
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö
In addition, W is traditionally listed...
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Hungarian alphabet
The Hungarian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet.
One sometimes speaks of the smaller and greater Hungarian alphabet, depending on whether the letters Q, W, X, Y which can only be found in foreign words and traditional orthography of...
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Russian alphabet
The modern Russian alphabet (русский алфавит, transliteration: russkiy alfavit) is a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet. It was introduced into Kievan Rus' at the time of Vladimir the Great's conversion to Christianity.
The Russian alphabet is as...
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used from:
- 988 C.E.
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English alphabet
The modern English alphabet is a Latin-based alphabet consisting of 26 letters – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet:
The exact shape of printed letters varies depending on the typeface. The shape of handwritten...
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Georgian alphabet
The Georgian alphabet (Georgian: ქართული დამწერლობა [kartuli damts'erloba], literally "Georgian script") is the writing system currently used to write the Georgian language and other South Caucasian (Kartvelian) languages (Mingrelian, Svan and...
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Early Cyrillic alphabet
The old Cyrillic alphabet is a writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the ninth or tenth century to write the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language. The modern Cyrillic alphabet continues to be used primarily for Slavic...
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Italian alphabet
The Italian alphabet is a variant of the Latin alphabet used by the Italian language. The standard contemporary Italian alphabet has 21 letters, shown in the table below.
The Italian alphabet has five vowel letters, ‹a e i o u›. Of those, only ‹a›...
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Fraser alphabet
The Fraser alphabet or Old Lisu Alphabet is an artificial script invented around 1915 by the Sara Ba Thaw, a Karen preacher from Myanmar, and improved by the missionary James O. Fraser, to write the Lisu language. It is a single-case (unicameral)...
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Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is the first and oldest alphabet in the narrow sense that it notes each vowel and consonant with a...
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ISO 15924 code:
- Grek
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Gothic alphabet
The Gothic alphabet is an alphabetic writing system attributed to Ulfilas (or Wulfila) which was used exclusively for writing the ancient Gothic language. Before its creation in the fourth century, the Goths had used runes to write their language....
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Runic alphabet
The runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes to write various Germanic languages prior to the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter. The Scandinavian variants are also known as...
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ISO 15924 code:
- Runr
used from:
- 150 C.E.
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Ukrainian alphabet
The Ukrainian alphabet is the set of letters used to write Ukrainian, the official language of Ukraine. It is one of the national variations of the Cyrillic writing system.
In Ukrainian it is called Украї́нська абе́тка [ukrɑˈjı̽nʲsʲkɑ ɑˈbɛtkɑ],...
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Younger Futhark
The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian runes, is a runic alphabet, a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, consisting of only 16 characters, in use from ca. 800 CE. The reduction, paradoxically, happened at the same time as phonetic changes led...
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Elder Futhark
The Elder Futhark (or Elder Fuþark, Older Futhark, Old Futhark) is the oldest form of the runic alphabet, used by Germanic tribes for Northwest Germanic and Migration period Germanic dialects of the 2nd to 8th centuries for inscriptions on artifacts...
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Manchu alphabet
The Manchu alphabet was used for recording the now near-extinct Manchu language; a similar script is used today by the Xibe people, who speak a language descended from Manchu. It is written vertically from top to bottom, with columns proceeding from...
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Macedonian alphabet
The orthography of Macedonian includes an alphabet (Macedonian: Македонска азбука, Makedonska azbuka), which is an adaptation of the Cyrillic alphabet, as well as language-specific conventions of spelling and punctuation.
The Macedonian alphabet was...
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Anglo-Saxon runes
Futhorc, a runic alphabet used by the Anglo-Saxons, was descended from the Elder Futhark of 24 runes and contained between 26 and 33 characters. It was used probably from the fifth century onward, for recording Old English and Old Frisian.
There are...
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Avestan alphabet
The Avestan alphabet is a writing system developed during Iran's Sassanid era (226–651) to render the Avestan language.
As a side effect of its development, the script was also used for Pazend, a method of writing Middle Persian that was used...
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Moldovan alphabet
The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet is a Cyrillic alphabet designed for the Romanian/Moldovan language in the Soviet Union and used from 1938 to 1989 (and still today in Transnistria). Its introduction was decided by the Central Executive Committee of...
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used from:
- 1930
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Romanian Cyrillic alphabet
The Romanian Cyrillic alphabet was used to write Romanian language before 1860–1862, when it was officially replaced by a Latin-based alphabet, although Cyrillic remained in occasional use until circa 1920. It is not the same as the Russian-based...
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Ukrainian Latin alphabet
A Latin alphabet for the Ukrainian language has been proposed or imposed several times in history, but has never challenged the conventional Cyrillic Ukrainian alphabet. The Ukrainian literary language has been written with the Cyrillic alphabet, in...
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Belarusian alphabet
The Belarusian alphabet is based on the Cyrillic script and is derived from the alphabet of the Old Church Slavonic language. The alphabet has existed in its modern form since 1918 and consists of thirty-two letters. See also Belarusian Latin...
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Todo Bichig
The Clear script (Mongolian: Тодо бичиг, todo bichig) was created in 1648 by the Oirat Buddhist monk the Zaya Pandita Oktorguin Dalai to write Mongolian. It was developed on the basis of the traditional Mongolian script with the goal of bringing the...
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Romic alphabet
The Romic Alphabet, sometimes known as the Romic Reform, is a phonetic alphabet proposed by Henry Sweet. It is the direct ancestor of the modern International Phonetic Alphabet. The alphabet differs from previously proposed spelling reforms by...
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Serbian Cyrillic alphabet
The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (Serbian: српска/Вукова ћирилица, srpska/Vukova ćirilica, literally "Serbian/Vuk's Cyrillic alphabet") is the modern alphabet used to write the Serbian language. It is an adaptation of the Cyrillic alphabet for the...
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Mongolian script
Mongolian script (Mongolian: Mongγol bičig, cyrillic: Монгол бичиг, Mongol bichig), or Hudum Mongolian script (in comparison with Todo Mongolian script), was the first of many writing systems created for the Mongolian language and the most...
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Tok Pisin alphabet
The Tok Pisin alphabet contains 22 letters and 2 digraphs, five of which are vowels. The letters are (vowels in bold):
Tok Pisin has two digraphs, called:
