List of writing systems by adoption

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This is a list of major writing systems or scripts ordered by estimates of the number of contemporary users and geographic reach. For a comprehensive list of scripts, see List of writing systems.

Contents

List of writing scripts by adoption [edit]

This is an incomplete list. You can help by expanding it.[1]

Name of Script Type Population actively using (in millions) Languages associated with Regions with predominant usage
Latin script Alphabet  ?[2] Americas, Europe, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania
Chinese characters Logographic 1340[3] Chinese languages, Japanese (Kanji), Korean (Hanja)[4] Eastern Asia
Arabic script Abjad or Alphabetic (when diacritics are used) 380 Arabic language, Farsi, Urdu Middle East and North Africa, Pakistan, India (some states)
Cyrillic Alphabet 250 Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian, others Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Mongolia, the Russian Far East
Devanagari Abugida 220[5] Hindi, Marathi, Konkani, Nepali, Sanskrit, several others India, Nepal
Bengali script Abugida 120[6] Bengali, Assamese, Bishnupriya Manipuri and Meitei Manipuri West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Jharkhand Manipur, Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India and Bangladesh
Kana Syllabary 120[7] Japanese, Okinawan. Ainu Japan

Less than 100 million users [edit]

Name of Script Type Population actively using (in millions) Languages associated with Regions with predominant usage
Javanese script Abugida 80[8] Javanese Java island, Javanese diaspora
Hangeul Alphabet, featural 60[9] Korean North Korea, South Korea, Jilin Province (China)
Tamil script Abugida 58[10] Tamil language Tamil Nadu (India), Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia
Malayalam alphabet Abugida 52[11] Malayalam language Kerala (India)
Telugu script Abugida 45[12] Telugu language Andra Pradesh, India
Burmese script Abugida 39[13] Burmese language Myanmar
Thai script Abugida 38[14] Thai language Thailand
Kannada script Abugida 35[15] Kannada language Karnataka, India
Gujarati script Abugida 30 Gujarati Gujarat, India

Less than 20 million users [edit]

Name of Script Type Population actively using (in millions) Languages associated with Regions with predominant usage
Ge'ez script Abugida 18[16] Amharic, Tigrinya language Ethiopia, Eritrea
Sinhala script Abugida 14.4[17] Sinhalese Sri Lanka
Khmer script Abugida 11.4[18] Khmer Cambodia
Greek alphabet Alphabet 11 Greek language Greece
Hebrew script Abjad 6 Hebrew language, Jewish languages Israel
Georgian script Alphabet 4.5 Georgian language and many other Kartvelian languages Georgia
Armenian script Alphabet 3.7 Armenian language Armenia

Distribution maps [edit]

Principal scripts at the national level, with selected regional and minority scripts.
Alphabet Latin Cyrillic&Latin Greek Georgian Armenian Logographic+Syllabic Hanzi (L) Kana (2S)+Kanji(L) Hangul(Featural-alphabetic S)+limited Hanja(L)
Abjad Arabic&Latin Hebrew Abugida N, S Indic Ethiopic Thaana Canadian Syllabic
Writing systems of the world today.

See also [edit]

Notes and references [edit]

  1. ^ Some of the only major writing systems not yet added are Gurmukhi (used to write Punjabi in India), Oriya script and Malayalam script, and each has about 20-30 million users. Lao script and Yi script also seem to have a few million users, based in Laos and Southern China, respectively.
  2. ^ Difficult to determine, as it is used to write a very large number of languages with varying literacy rates among them.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ Hanja has been banned in North Korea and is increasingly being phased out in South Korea. It is mainly used in official documents to identify Chinese roots to Korean words.
  5. ^ Based on a population of about 300 million speakers and a 70-75% literacy rate.
  6. ^ Based on a population of 200 million Bengali speakers and a 60% literacy rate.
  7. ^ Based on Japanese population of roughly 120 million and a literacy rate near 100%.
  8. ^ Since around 1945 Javanese script has largely been supplanted by Latin script to write Javanese
  9. ^ Excluding figures related to North Korea, which does not publish literacy rates.
  10. ^ Tamil Nadu has an estimated 80% literacy rate and about 72 million Tamil speakers.
  11. ^ Spoken by 52 million people in the world.
  12. ^ Based on 61.11% literacy rate in Andra Pradesh (according to gov't estimate) and 74 million Telugu speakers.
  13. ^ Based on 42 million speakers of Burmese in a country (Myanmar) with a 92% literacy rate.
  14. ^ Based on 40 million proficient speakers in a country with a 94% literacy rate.
  15. ^ Based on 46 million speakers of Kannada language in a state with a 75.6 literacy rate. url=http://updateox.com/india/26-populated-cities-karnataka-population-sex-ratio-literacy
  16. ^ Based on 30 million native speakers of Amharic and Tigrinya and a 60% literacy rate.
  17. ^ Based on 15.6 million Sinhalese language speakers and a 92% literacy rate in Sri Lanka.
  18. ^ Based on 15 million Khmer speakers with 73.6% literacy rate.
  • Population numbers using a script are inferred based on literacy rates of regions where the scripts are principally used.
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