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Language Writing System table
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Freebase Staff for the Language Commons
A language writing system is the system of visual marks used to record expressions in a language in lasting form, whether on paper, a computer,...
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| x name | x image | x ISO 15924 code | x type of writing | x languages | x article |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| x Cyrillic alphabet |
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220 | Alphabet | Bulgarian Language |
The Cyrillic alphabet or rather Cyrillic script (pronounced /sɨˈrɪlɪk/; also called azbuka, from the old names of the first two letters of almost all its variants) is a writing system, shared by six Slavic national languages (Bulgarian, Russian,...
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| Russian Language | |||||
| Ukrainian Language | |||||
| Tatar Language | |||||
| Macedonian Language | |||||
| more ▼ | |||||
| x Devanāgarī |
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315 | Abugida | Nepali Language |
Devanāgarī (देवनागरी, pronounced /ˌdeɪvəˈnɑːɡəriː/ in English), or Nāgarī, is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal. It is written from left to right, lacks distinct letter cases, and is recognizable by a distinctive horizontal line running along...
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| Deva | Hindi Language | ||||
| Hindustani language | |||||
| Marathi Language | |||||
| Sanskrit Language | |||||
| more ▼ | |||||
| x Kanji |
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Han | Logogram | Japanese Language |
Kanji (help·info) (漢字) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (ひらがな, 平仮名), katakana (カタカナ, 片仮名), Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet (also known as...
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| x Hiragana |
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Hira | Syllabary | Japanese Language |
Hiragana (平仮名, ひらがな or ヒラガナ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet (Rōmaji.) Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
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| Okinawan language | |||||
| Middle Japanese | |||||
| x Katakana |
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Kana | Syllabary | Japanese Language |
Katakana (片仮名, カタカナ or かたかな) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet. The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from...
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| Ainu Language | |||||
| Okinawan language | |||||
| Palauan Language | |||||
| Middle Japanese | |||||
| x Latin alphabet |
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Latn | Alphabet | English Language |
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, and was initially developed by the...
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| Japanese Language | |||||
| Slovak Language | |||||
| Canadian French | |||||
| Irish | |||||
| more ▼ | |||||
| x Cuneiform script |
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Logogram | Assyrian language |
Cuneiform script (pronounced /kjuːˈniː.ɨfɔrm/ kew-NEE-i-form or /ˈkjuːnɨfɔrm/ KEW-ni-form) is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Emerging in Sumer around the 30th century BC, with predecessors reaching into the late 4th...
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| Akkadian language | |||||
| Luwian language | |||||
| Hittite language | |||||
| Hattic language | |||||
| more ▼ | |||||
| x Right to left | Hebrew language |
Direction of writing a language.
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| x Unwritten Language | Koshin Language |
This topic is to assign unwritten languages a writing system.
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| Naki Language | |||||
| x Arabic alphabet |
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Arab | Abjad | Arabic language |
The Arabic alphabet (Arabic: أبجدية عربية) is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. After the Latin alphabet, it is the second-most widely used alphabet around the world.
The alphabet...
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| Tachelhit Language | |||||
| Persian language | |||||
| Kurdish language | |||||
| Balochi language | |||||
| more ▼ | |||||
| x Icelandic alphabet |
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Icelandic Language |
The modern Icelandic alphabet consists of the following 32 letters:
It is based upon a Latin alphabet with diacritics, in addition it includes the character eth Ðð and the runic letter thorn Þþ (pictured to the right). Ææ and Öö are considered...
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| x Esperanto alphabet | Esperanto Language | ||||
| x Irish orthography |
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Irish |
Irish orthography has evolved over many centuries, since Old Irish was first written down in the Latin alphabet in about the sixth century AD. Prior to that, Primitive Irish was written in Ogham. Irish spelling is mainly based on etymological...
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| x Syriac alphabet |
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Syrc 135 | Abjad | Assyrian Neo-Aramaic Language |
The Syriac alphabet is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language from around the 2nd century BC. It is one of the Semitic abjads directly descending from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet and shares similarities with the Phoenician,...
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| Aramaic language | |||||
| Syriac language | |||||
| Arabic language | |||||
| Turoyo Language | |||||
| more ▼ | |||||
| x Tengwar |
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Teng | Sindarin |
Tengwar is a script that was invented by J.R.R. Tolkien. In his works, the tengwar script, invented by Fëanor, was used to write a number of the languages of Middle-earth, including Quenya and Sindarin. However, it can also be used to write other...
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| 290 | Quenya | ||||
| x Cirth |
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Cirt | Khuzdul |
The Cirth ("Runes") are the letters of an artificial script which was invented by J. R. R. Tolkien for the constructed languages he devised and used in his works. The initial C in Cirth is pronounced as a K, never as an S.
The runic alphabet used by...
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| 291 | Sindarin | ||||
| Quenya | |||||
| x Hangul |
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Hang | Alphabet | Korean Language |
Hangul (pronounced /ˈhɑːŋɡʊl/, or Korean [haːn.ɡɯl] (help·info), in Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl (in South Korea) or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul (in North Korea)) is the native alphabet of the Korean language, as distinguished from the logographic Sino...
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| Koryo-mar | |||||
| x Hanja | Han | Logogram | Korean Language |
Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation. Hanja-mal or hanja-eo refers to words which can be...
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| Middle Korean | |||||
| Silla language | |||||
| Goguryeo language | |||||
| Old Korean | |||||
| x Tifinagh |
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Tfng | Alphabet | Berber languages |
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...
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| Abjad | Tarifit Language | ||||
| Tuareg languages | |||||
| Central Morocco Tamazight | |||||
| x Tamil |
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Taml | Abugida | Tamil Language |
The Tamil script (தமிழ் அரிச்சுவடி tamiḻ ariccuvaṭi "Tamil alphabet") is a script that is used to write the Tamil language. With the use of diacritics to represent aspirated and voiced consonants not represented in the basic script, it is also used...
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| Sanskrit Language | |||||
| Badaga Language | |||||
| Arwi | |||||
| Sourashtra language | |||||
| x Tamil-Brahmi |
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Abugida | Tamil Language |
Tamil-Brahmi was an early variant of the Brahmi script used to write Tamil characters. It is also known as the Tamili script. It is distinguished from standrad Asokan Brahmi, by an inherent vowel marker for pure consonants and consonants.
Iravatham...
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| x Zhuang logogram | Zhuang language |
Zhuang logograms or Sawndip are logograms created as a derivative characters of Han characters and used by Zhuang in Guangxi, China. In Chinese, these are called Gǔ Zhuàngzì (Chinese: 古壮字) or Fāngkuài Zhuàngzì (方块壮字), meaning old Zhuang or square...
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| x Georgian alphabet |
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Alphabet | Georgian Language |
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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| Laz Language | |||||
| Svan language | |||||
| x Abkhaz alphabet |
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Alphabet | Abkhaz Language |
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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| x Greek alphabet |
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Grek | Alphabet | Greek Language |
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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| Greek, Ancient Language | |||||
| Albanian, Arvanitika Language | |||||
| Crimean Gothic | |||||
| Urum Language | |||||
| more ▼ | |||||
| x Phoenician alphabet | Phnx | Alphabet | Phoenician |
The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BCE. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia. The...
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| Abjad | |||||
| x Proto-Canaanite alphabet |
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Abjad |
The Proto-Canaanite alphabet is a consonantal alphabet of twenty-two acrophonic glyphs, found in Levantine texts of the Late Bronze Age (from ca. the 15th century BC), by convention taken to last until a cut-off date of 1050 BC, after which it is...
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| x Orkhon script |
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Orkh | Old Turkic language |
The Old Turkic script (also Göktürk script, Orkhon script, Orkhon-Yenisey script; Turkish: Orhun Yazıtları, traditional Chinese: 鄂爾渾文字; pinyin: È'ěrhún Wénzì) is the alphabet used by the Göktürk and other early Turkic Khanates from at least the 8th...
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| x Rongorongo |
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Rapa Nui Language |
Rongorongo (pronounced /ˈrɒŋɡoʊˈrɒŋɡoʊ/ in English, [ˈɾoŋoˈɾoŋo] in Rapa Nui) is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing or proto-writing. It cannot be read despite numerous attempts at...
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| x Egyptian hieroglyphs |
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Egyp | Logogram | Egyptian language |
Egyptian hieroglyphs (pronounced /ˈhaɪroʊɡlɪf/; from Greek ἱερογλύφος "sacred carving", also hieroglyphic = τὰ ἱερογλυφικά [γράμματα]) was a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that contained a combination of logographic and...
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| x Cherokee syllabary |
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Syllabary | Cherokee Language |
The Cherokee syllabary is a syllabary invented by Sequoyah to write the Cherokee language in 1819. His creation of the syllabary is particularly noteworthy in that he could not previously read any script. He first experimented with logograms, but...
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| x Pitman Shorthand |
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Abjad | English Language |
Pitman shorthand is a system of shorthand for the English language developed by Englishman Sir Isaac Pitman (1813–1897), who first presented it in 1837. Like most systems of shorthand, it is a phonetic system; the symbols do not represent letters,...
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| Abugida | |||||
| x Tagbanwa |
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Tagb | Abugida | Ethnic Groups of Palawan |
Tagbanwa, also known as Apurahuano, is one of the indigenous writing systems of the Philippines. The Tagbanwa language, an Austronesian language, with about 8, 000 speakers in the central and northern regions of Palawan, is dying out as the younger...
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| x Tagalog alphabet | Pampangan Language |
Filipino orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the Filipino language, which includes its alphabet. The Makabagong alpabetong Filipino (English: Modern Filipino alphabet) is made up of 28 letters, which includes the entire 20-letter...
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| Tagalog language | |||||
| Filipino language | |||||
| Cebuano language | |||||
| Ilokano language | |||||
| more ▼ | |||||
| x Latin (Polish variant) | Polish Language | ||||
| x Chinese | Chinese language | ||||
| x Faroese alphabet | Faroese |
The Faroese alphabet consists of 29 letters derived from the Latin alphabet:
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| x Left to right | Finnish Language | ||||
| English Language | |||||
| Swedish Language | |||||
| Norwegian language | |||||
| French Language | |||||
| x Tlingit alphabet | Tlingit Language |
The Tlingit language has been recorded in a number of orthographies over the two hundred years since European contact. The first transcriptions of Tlingit were done by Russian Orthodox ministers, hence they were in the Cyrillic alphabet. A hiatus in...
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| x Old Italic alphabet |
![The Masiliana tablet abecedarium, ca. 700 BC: ABGDEVZHΘIKLMN[Ξ]OPŚQRSTUXΦΨ, read right to left](http://img.freebase.com/api/trans/image_thumb//guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000004988b65?maxheight=64&mode=fillcropmid&maxwidth=64)
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Ital | Raetic language |
Old Italic refers to several now extinct alphabet systems used on the Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various Indo-European (predominantly Italic) and non-Indo-European (e.g. Etruscan) languages. The alphabets derive from the Euboean Greek...
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| Etruscan language | |||||
| Umbrian language | |||||
| Volscian language | |||||
| Oscan | |||||
| more ▼ | |||||
| x Kikakui |
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Mende Language |
Kikakui is a syllabary used for writing the Mende language.
It was devised by Mohammed Turay (born ca. 1850), an Islamic scholar, at a town called Maka (Barri Chiefdom, southern Sierra Leone). One of Turay's Koranic students was a young man named...
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| x Ol Chiki script |
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Olck | Santali Language |
The Ol Chiki script, also known as Ol Cemetʼ ("language of writing"), Ol Ciki, Ol (and sometimes as the Santali alphabet), was created in 1925 by Raghunath Murmu for the Santali language. Previously, Santali had been written with the Bengali...
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| x Lycian alphabet |
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Lyci | Lycian language |
Lycian script was used to write the Lycian language and as such was coterminous with the latest end point of it. That the language preceded the script is indicated by the names, which must have existed before they were written. Like the Carian...
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| x Hieratic |
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Egyh | Abjad | Egyptian language |
Hieratic is a cursive writing system used in pharaonic Egypt that developed alongside the hieroglyphic system, to which it is intimately related. It was primarily written in ink with a reed brush on papyrus, allowing scribes to write quickly without...
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| x Gagauz alphabet | Gagauz Language |
The modern Gagauz alphabet, used for the Gagauz language, is a 32-letter Latin-based alphabet modelled on the Turkish alphabet.
Previously, Gagauz used the Greek alphabet and until 1996 the Cyrillic alphabet.
In their standard order, the letters of...
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| x Zhuyin |
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Zhuyin fuhao , or "Symbols for Annotating Sounds", often abbreviated as Zhuyin, or known as Bopomofo (￣ﾄﾅ￣ﾄﾆ￣ﾄﾇ￣ﾄﾈ) after the first four letters of this Chinese phonemic alphabet (bo po mo fo), is the national phonetic system of Taiwan for...
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| x Hebrew alphabet |
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Abjad | Yiddish language |
The Hebrew alphabet (aleph-bet) (Alef Beis) (Hebrew: אָלֶף-בֵּית עִבְרִי, alephbet ivri) consists of 22 letters used for writing the Hebrew language and, in mildly adapted forms, for writing several languages of the Jewish diaspora, most famously...
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| Hebrew language | |||||
| Ladino Language | |||||
| Biblical Hebrew language | |||||
| Aramaic language | |||||
| more ▼ | |||||
| x Turkish alphabet |
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Ladino Language |
The Turkish alphabet is a Latin-based alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, a certain number of which (Ç, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ş, and Ü) have been adapted or modified for the phonetic requirements of the language.
These...
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| Homshetsi language | |||||
| Turkish Language | |||||
| x Aramaic alphabet |
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Abjad | Aramaic language |
The Aramaic alphabet is adapted from the Phoenician alphabet, and became distinctive from it by the eighth century BCE. The letters all represent consonants, some of which are matres lectionis, which also indicate long vowels.
The Aramaic alphabet...
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| Hebrew language | |||||
| Syriac language | |||||
| Mandaic language | |||||
| Khwarezmian language | |||||
| more ▼ | |||||
| x Mandaic alphabet |
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Mand | Aramaic language |
The Mandaic alphabet is based on the Aramaic alphabet, and is used for writing the Mandaic language.
The Mandaic name for the script is Abagada or Abaga, after the first letters of the alphabet. Rather than the ancient Semitic names for the letters ...
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| Mandaic language | |||||
| Neo-Mandaic | |||||
| x Armenian alphabet |
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Armn | Alphabet | Armenian Language |
The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. Until the 19th century, Classical Armenian was the literary language; since then, the Armenian alphabet has been used to write the two...
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| Homshetsi language | |||||
| Grabar | |||||
| x Ge'ez alphabet |
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Ethi | Abugida | Amharic Language |
Ge'ez (ግዕዝ Gəʿəz), also called Ethiopic, is an abugida script that was originally developed to write Ge'ez, a Semitic language. In communities that use it, such as the Amharic and Tigrinya, the script is called fidäl (ፊደል), which means "script" or ...
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| Geez Language | |||||
| Tigrigna Language | |||||
| Oromo language | |||||
| Tigre language | |||||
| more ▼ | |||||
| x Nü Shu |
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Syllabary |
Nü Shu (traditional Chinese: 女書; simplified Chinese: 女书; pinyin: Nǚshū; literally "women's writing"), is a syllabary writing system that was used exclusively among women in Jiangyong County in Hunan province of southern China .
Unlike the standard...
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| x Northeastern Iberian script |
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Semi-syllabary |
The northeastern Iberian script is also known as Levantine Iberian or Iberian, because it is the Iberian script that was most frequently used, and was the main means of written expression of the Iberian language. The language is also expressed by...
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| x Southeastern Iberian script |
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Semi-syllabary |
The southeastern Iberian script, also known as Meridional Iberian, was one of the means of written expression of the Iberian language, which was written mainly in the northeastern Iberian script and residually by the Greco-Iberian alphabet. About...
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| x Southwest script |
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Semi-syllabary | Tartessian language |
The Southwest Script or Southwestern Script, also known as Tartessian or South Lusitanian, is a Paleohispanic script used to write an unknown language usually identified as Tartessian. Southwest inscriptions have been found mainly in the...
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| x Celtiberian script |
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Semi-syllabary |
The Celtiberian script is a paleohispanic script that was the main mean of written expression of the Celtiberian language, an extinct Continental Celtic language, also expressed in Latin alphabet. This script is a direct adaptation of the...
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| x English alphabet | Alphabet | Sudanese English |
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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| Modern English | |||||
| x Belarusian Latin alphabet |
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The Belarusian Latin alphabet (also known as Latsinka (in BGN/PCGN) or Łacinka (in itself), from Belarusian: лацінка, informal for the Latin alphabet in general) — the common name of the several historically existing systems of rendering the...
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| x Perso-Latin Alphabet |
Perso-Latin alphabet is a Latin-based alphabet for Persian language. It consists of basic letters of Latin alphabet in addition to three letters formed with diacritics: â, š, and ž. Furthermore, apostrophe has a special use. Perso-Latin alphabet is...
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