List of writing systems
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This is a list of writing systems (or scripts), classified according to some common distinguishing features.

The usual name of the script is given first (and bolded); 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.

Contents

1 Pictographic/ideographic writing systems

2 Logographic writing systems

2.1 Consonant-based logographies

2.2 Syllable-based logographies

2.2.1 Logographies based on Chinese

3 Syllabaries

3.1 Semi-syllabaries: Part syllabic, part alphabetic scripts

4 Segmental scripts

4.1 Abjads

4.2 True alphabets

4.2.1 Linear nonfeatural alphabets

4.2.2 Featural linear alphabets

4.2.3 Manual alphabets

4.2.4 Other non-linear alphabets

4.3 Abugidas

4.3.1 Abugidas of the Brāhmī family

4.3.2 Other Abugidas

4.3.3 Final consonant-diacritic abugidas

4.3.4 Vowel-based abugidas

5 Undeciphered systems thought to be writing

6 Undeciphered manuscripts

7 Other

7.1 Phonetic alphabets

7.2 Special alphabets

7.2.1 Tactile alphabets

7.2.2 Manual alphabets

7.2.3 Long-Distance Signaling

7.3 Alternative alphabets

7.4 Fictional writing systems

8 See also

9 References

Pictographic/ideographic writing systems

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. 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

Dongba – Naxi

Míkmaq hieroglyphic writing – Míkmaq - Does have phonetic components, however.

There are also symbol systems used to represent things other than language. Some of these are

Blissymbols - A constructed ideographic script used primarily in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC).

DanceWriting

New Epoch Notation Painting

Shui script - Shui language

Logographic writing systems

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 comprised solely of logograms. All contain graphemes which represent phonetic (sound-based) elements as well. These phonetic elements may be used on their own (to represent, for example, grammatical inflections or foreign words), or may serve as phonetic complements to a logogram (used to specify the sound of a logogram which might otherwise represent more than one word). In the case of Chinese, the phonetic element is built into the logogram itself; in Egyptian and Mayan, many glyphs are purely phonetic, while others function as either logograms or phonetic elements, depending on context. For this reason, many such scripts may be more properly referred to as logosyllabic or complex scripts; the terminology used is largely a product of custom in the field, and is to an extent arbitrary.

Consonant-based logographies

Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, and Demotic – writing systems of Ancient Egypt

Syllable-based logographies

Anatolian hieroglyphs – Luwian

Cuneiform – Sumerian, Akkadian, other Semitic languages, Elamite, Hittite, Luwian, Hurrian, and Urartian

Chinese characters (Hanzi) – Chinese, Japanese (called Kanji), Korean (called Hanja), Vietnamese (called Han tu, obsolete)

Mayan – Chorti, Yucatec, and other Classic Maya languages

Yi (classical) – various Yi/Lolo languages

Logographies based on Chinese

Jurchen script – Jurchen

Khitan large script – Khitan

Tangut – Tangut

Zhuang – Zhuang

Chữ Nôm – Vietnamese (for vernacular Vietnamese, now obsolete)

Syllabaries

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 – Mycenean Greek

Geba – Naxi

Hiragana – Japanese

Japanese manual syllabary – Japanese Sign Language

Katakana – Japanese

Kikakui - Mende

Kpelle – Kpelle

Linear B – Mycenean Greek

Man'yōgana - Japanese

Nü Shu – Yao

Vai – Vai

Woleaian – Woleaian (a likely syllabary)

Yi (modern) – various Yi/Lolo languages

Semi-syllabaries: Part syllabic, part alphabetic scripts

In most of these systems, some consonant-vowel combinations are written as syllables, but others are written as consonant plus vowel. In the case of Old Persian, all vowels were written regardless, so it was effectively a true alphabet despite its syllabic component. In Japanese a similar system plays a minor role in foreign borrowings; for example, [tu] is written [to]+[u], and [ti] as [te]+[i]. Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries behaved as a 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-sillabaries – 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

Zhuyin fuhao – phonetic script for Chinese languages, and principal script for several Formosan languages.

Eskayan – Bohol, Philippines (a syllabary apparently based on an alphabet; some alphabetic characteristics remain)

Segmental scripts

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

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.

Aramaic

Arabic – Arabic, Azeri, Baluchi, Kashmiri, Pashtun, Persian, Kurdish, Sindhi, Uighur, Urdu, and the languages of many other Muslim peoples

Estrangelo – Syriac

Hebrew Square Script – Hebrew, Yiddish, and other Jewish languages

Jawi - Arabic, Malay

Manichaean script

Nabataean – the Nabataeans of Petra

Pahlavi script – Middle Persian

Parthian

Psalter

Phoenician – Phoenician and other Canaanite languages

Proto-Canaanite

Sabaean

South Arabian – Sabaic, Qatabanic, Himyaritic, and Hadhramautic

Sogdian

Samaritan (Old Hebrew) – Aramaic, Arabic, and Hebrew

Tifinagh – Tuareg

Ugaritic – Ugaritic, Hurrian

True alphabets

A true alphabet contains separate letters (not diacritic marks) for both consonants and vowels.

Linear nonfeatural alphabets

Linear alphabets are composed of lines on a surface, such as ink on paper.

Arabic (for Uyghur)

Armenian – Armenian

Avestan alphabet – Avestan language

Beitha Kukju – Albanian

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. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are changing to the Latin alphabet but still have considerable use of Cyrillic. See Languages using Cyrillic.

Eclectic Shorthand

Elbasan – Albanian

Fraser – Lisu

Gabelsberger shorthand

Georgian – Georgian and Mingrelian. Variants include Mkhedruli, Khutsuri, Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri

Glagolitic – Old Church Slavonic

Gothic – Gothic

Greek – Greek

International Phonetic Alphabet

Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet – 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 (pronounced [oːm]) – Gaelic, Britannic, Pictish

Old Hungarian (in Hungarian magyar rovásírás or szekely-magyar rovásírás) – Hungarian

Old Italic – Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian

Old Permic (also called Abur) – Komi

Old Turkic – Turkic

Osmanya – Somali

Runic alphabet – Germanic languages

Ol Cemet' – Santali

Tai Lue – Lue

Vah – Bassa

Featural linear alphabets

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.

Gregg Shorthand

Hangul – Korean

Shavian alphabet

Tengwar (a fictional script)

Visible Speech (a phonetic script)

Stokoe notation for American Sign Language

Manual alphabets

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)

Catalonian manual alphabet

Chilean manual alphabet

Chinese manual alphabet

Dutch manual alphabet

Ethiopian manual alphabet (an abugida)

French manual alphabet

Greek manual alphabet

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)

Israli manual alphabet (an abjad)

Italian manual alphabet

Korean manual alphabet

Latin American manual alphabets

Polish manual alphabet

Portuguese manual alphabet

Romanian manual alphabet

Russian manual alphabet (also used in Bulgaria and ex-Soviet states)

Spanish manual alphabet (Madrid)

Swedish manual alphabet

Yugoslav manual alphabet

Other non-linear alphabets

These are other alphabets composed of something other than lines on a surface.

Braille (Unified) – an embossed alphabet for the visually-impaired, used with some extra letters to transcribe the Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabets, as well as Chinese

Braille (Korean)

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)

American Morse code (defunct)

Optical telegraphy (defunct)

Flag semaphore – (made by moving hand-held flags)

Abugidas

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 abugida regardless of whether the vowels look like diacritics or full letters. The vast majority of abugidas are found from India to Southeast Asia and belong historically to the Brāhmī family.

Abugidas of the Brāhmī family

Ahom

Brāhmī – Prakrit, Sanskrit

Balinese

Batak – Toba and other Batak languages

Baybayin – Ilokano, Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Tagalog, Bikol languages, Visayan languages, and possibly other Philippine languages

Bengali – Bengali, Assamese

Buhid

Burmese – Burmese, Karen languages, Mon, and Shan

Cham

Dehong – Dehong Dai

Devanāgarī – Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi, Nepali, and many other languages of northern India

Gujarāti – Gujarāti, Kachchi

Gurmukhi script – Punjabi

Hanuno’o

Javanese

Kaganga – Rejang

Kannada – Kannada, Tulu

Khmer

Lao

Limbu

Lontara’ – Buginese, Makassar, and Mandar

Malayalam

Modi – Marathi

Oriya

Phags-pa – Mongolian, Chinese, and other languages of the Yuan Dynasty Mongol Empire

Ranjana – Newari

Sinhala

Sourashtra

Soyombo

Syloti Nagri - Sylheti

Tagbanwa – Languages of Palawan

Tai Dam

Tai Tham – Khün, and Northern Thai

Tamil

Telugu

Thai

Tibetan

Tocharian

Varang Kshiti – Ho

Other Abugidas

Canadian Aboriginal syllabics – Cree syllabics (for Cree), Inuktitut syllabics (for Inuktitut), and other variants for Ojibwe, Carrier, Blackfoot, and other languages of Canada

Ethiopic – Amharic, Ge’ez, Oromo, Tigrigna

Kharoṣṭhī – Gandhari, Sanskrit

Meroitic – Meroë

Pitman Shorthand

Pollard script – Miao

Sorang Sompeng – Sora

Thaana – Dhivehi

Thomas Natural Shorthand

Final consonant-diacritic abugidas

In at least one abugida, not only the vowel but any syllable-final consonant is written with a diacritic. That is, representing [o] with an under-ring, and final [k] with an over-cross, [sok] would written as s̥̽.

Róng – Lepcha

Vowel-based abugidas

In a couple abugidas, the vowels are basic, and the consonants secondary. If no consonant is written in Pahawh Hmong, it is understood to be /k/; consonants are written after the vowel they precede in speech. In Japanese Braille, the vowels but not the consonants have independent status, and it is the vowels which are modified when the consonant is y or w.

Boyd's Syllabic Shorthand

Japanese Braille – Japanese

Pahawh Hmong abugida – Hmong

Undeciphered systems thought to be writing

These writing 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. In others, such as the Phaistos Disc, there is little hope of progress unless further texts are found. 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 Vinca and other cases the system, although symbolic, may turn out to not be writing.

Byblos syllabary – the city of Byblos

Isthmian (apparently logosyllabic)

Indus – Indus Valley Civilization

Khipu – Inca Empire (very possibly not writing)

Khitan small script – Khitan

Linear A (a syllabary) – Minoan

Mixtec – Mixtec (perhaps pictographic)

Vinča symbols (perhaps proto-writing)

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)

Wadi el-Ħôl & 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

A number of manuscripts from comparable recent past may be written in an invented writing system, a cipher of an existing writing system or may only be a hoax.

Voynich manuscript

Rohonc Codex

Codex Seraphinianus

Hamptonese

Asemic writing

Other

Phonetic alphabets

This section lists alphabets used to transcribe phonetic or phonemic sound; not to be confused with spelling alphabets like the NATO phonetic alphabet.

International Phonetic Alphabet

Deseret alphabet

Unifon

Americanist phonetic notation

Uralic Phonetic Alphabet

Shavian alphabet

Special alphabets

Alphabets may exist in forms other than visible symbols on a surface. Some of these are:

Tactile alphabets

Braille

Moon type

New York Point

Manual alphabets

Fingerspelling

For example:

American Sign Language

American manual alphabet

Korean manual alphabet

Cued Speech

Long-Distance Signaling

International maritime signal flags

Morse code

Flag semaphore

Optical telegraphy

Alternative alphabets

Gregg Shorthand

Initial Teaching Alphabet

Pitman Shorthand

Quikscript

Fictional writing systems

Ath (alphabet)

Aurebesh

Cirth

D'ni

Goa'uld

Klingon

On Beyond Zebra!

Sarati

Tengwar

See also

Artificial script

List of languages by first written accounts

Genealogy of scripts derived from Proto-Sinaitic

Grapheme

Writing system

List of languages by writing system

List of inventors of writing systems

List of ISO 15924 codes

Category:Character sets - computer representations of alphabets, especially Unicode

Category:Writing systems

Deseret Alphabet

References