Writing systems
From UniLang Wiki
Different languages use different writing systems. The differences comprise not only the symbols used, but also the way these symbols are used: they might represent a single consonant or vowel, and entire syllable, or even an entire word.
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Alphabets
In these writing systems, each symbol represent a consonant or a vowel.
- Armenian alphabet
- Latin alphabet: letter names (in various languages)
- Greek alphabet
- Cyrillic
- Thai alphabet
- Korean alphabet
Abjads
In these writing systems, each symbol represent a consonant. Vowels are filled in by the reader's knowledge of the language or by helping consonants which close a syllable and indicate the vowel of that syllable. Examples are "W" which may close for "O" or "U", "Y" which me close for "I" and "H" which may close for "AH" or "EH."
Abugidas
In this kind of writing system, each symbol has an inherent vowel which is changed by a slight change in the symbol.
- Filipino Baybayin
- Burmese
- Devanagari
- Inuktitut
- Khmer
- Lao
- Thai
- Tibetan
- Sanskrit
- Hindi
- Gujarati
Syllabaries
In this kind of writing system, each symbol represents an entire syllable.
Logographic systems
In these writing systems, each symbol represents a morpheme, which is an unit of language that carries meaning. Thus symbols can represent a word or part of a word. Consequently, the number of symbols is very high.
- Chinese Hanzi
- Japanese Kanji
- Korean Hanja
- Egyptian Hieroglyphics
- Minoan Hieroglyphics, Linear A and B
- Blissymbolics
Mixed systems
Some languages used a mix of more than one kind of writing system.
External Links
- An excellent resource for writing systems of many languages.
Main Page >> General resources >> Writing systems
