List of writing systems

This is a list of writing systems (or scripts), classified according to some common distinguishing features. There are at least 3,866 languages that make use of an established writing system.

The usual name of the script is given first; 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.

Predominant national and selected regional or minority scripts

[A]lphabetic	[L]ogographic, [S]yllabic and [A]rtificially created	Abjad	Abugida
Latin   Cyrillic   Greek   Armenian   Georgian	Hanzi [L]  / Pinyin (Latin script) [A]   Kana [S] / Kanji [L]     Chosŏn'gŭl/Hangul [A] / Hanja [L]	Arabic   Hebrew	North Indic   South Indic   Ethiopic   Thaana   Canadian syllabic

^a Featural-alphabetic.   ^b Limited.

Writing systems of the world today.

Pictographic/ideographic writing systems

Template:Writing systems sidebar 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 – Although some proper nouns have phonetic components.
• Mixtec – Mixtec
• Dongba – Naxi – Although this is often supplemented with syllabic Geba script.
• Ersu Shābā – Ersu
• Míkmaq hieroglyphic writing – Míkmaq – Does have phonetic components, however.
• Nsibidi – Ekoi, Efik/Ibibio, Igbo
• Testerian – used for missionary work in Mexico
• Other Mesoamerican writing systems with the exception of Maya Hieroglyphs.

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

• Blissymbols – A constructed ideographic script used primarily in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC).
• iConji – A constructed ideographic script used primarily in social networking
• Emoji – Used to communicate feelings and thoughts on the world wide web
• Isotype (picture language)
• Sona
• A wide variety of notations

Linear B and Asemic writing also incorporate ideograms.

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 composed solely of logograms. All contain graphemes that 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 that 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, whereas 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 – the writing systems of Ancient Egypt
  • Egyptian hieroglyphs (List)

Syllable-based logographies

• Anatolian hieroglyphs – Luwian
• Cuneiform – Sumerian, Akkadian, other Semitic languages, Elamite, Hittite, Luwian, Hurrian, and Urartian
• Chinese characters (Hanzi) – Chinese, Japanese (Kanji), Korean (Hanja (occasionally used)), Vietnamese (Chu Nom (obsolete)), Zhuang Sawndip
  • Oracle bone script – Old Chinese
  • Bronzeware script – Old Chinese
  • Khitan large script – Khitan
  • Tangut script – Tangut
• Eghap (or Bagam) script
• Mayan – Chorti, Yucatec, and other Classic Maya languages
• Yi (classical) – various Yi/Lolo languages
• Shui script – Shui language
• Kantenji (Braille Kanji) - Japanese

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
• Bété
• Cherokee – Cherokee
• Cypriot – Arcadocypriot Greek
• Geba – Naxi
• Iban – Iban
• Kana – Japanese (although primarily based on moras rather than syllables)
  • Hiragana
  • Katakana
  • Man'yōgana
• Kikakui – Mende
• Kpelle – Kpelle
• Linear B – Mycenean Greek
• Loma – Loma
• Nü Shu – Chinese
• Nwagu Aneke script – Igbo
• Vai – Vai
• Woleaian – Woleaian (a likely syllabary)
• Yi (modern) – various Yi/Lolo languages

Semi-syllabaries: Partly syllabic, partly 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-syllabaries – 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
• Bopomofo (a.k.a. Zhuyin Fuhao) – phonetic script for the different varieties of Chinese.
• Eskayan – Eskayan language (a syllabary apparently based on an alphabet; some alphabetic characteristics remain)
• Bamum script – Bamum (a defective syllabary, with alphabetic principles used to fill the gaps)

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, Punjabi, Baluchi, Kashmiri, Pashto, Persian, Kurdish (vowels obligatory), Sindhi, Uighur (vowels obligatory), Urdu, and the languages of many other peoples of the Near East
• Hebrew – 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 – Sabaean, Qatabanic, Himyaritic, and Hadhramautic
• Sogdian
• Samaritan (Old Hebrew) – Aramaic, Arabic, and Hebrew
• Syriac – Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, Syriac, Turoyo and other Neo-Aramaic languages
• Tifinagh – Tuareg
• Ugaritic – Ugaritic, Hurrian

True alphabets

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

Linear nonfeatural alphabets

Writing systems used in countries of Europe.

  Greek

  Greek & Latin

  Latin

  Latin & Cyrillic

  Cyrillic

  Georgian

  Armenian

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

• Adlam – Fula
• Armenian – Armenian
• Avestan alphabet – Avestan
• Avoiuli – Raga
• Beitha Kukju – Albanian
• Borama – Somali
• Carian – Carian
• Caucasian Albanian alphabet – Old Udi language
• Coorgi–Cox alphabet – Kodava
• 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. Azerbaijani, Turkmen, and Uzbek are officially written in Latin (in their respective countries) but have a considerable number of users writing in Cyrillic. See Languages using Cyrillic.
• Eclectic Shorthand
• Elbasan – Albanian
• Fraser – Lisu
• Gabelsberger shorthand
• Georgian – Georgian and other Kartvelian languages
• Glagolitic – Old Church Slavonic
• Gothic – Gothic
• Greek – Greek
• International Phonetic Alphabet
• Kaddare – Somali
• Latin AKA Roman – 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
• Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong
• N'Ko – Maninka language, Bambara, Dyula language
• Ogham (Irish pronunciation: [oːm]) – Gaelic, Britannic, Pictish
• Old Hungarian (in Hungarian magyar rovásírás or székely-magyar rovásírás) – Hungarian
• Old Italic – a family of connected alphabets for the Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Messapian, South Picene, Raetic, Venetic, Lepontic, Camunic languages
• Old Permic (also called Abur) – Komi
• Old Turkic – Turkic
• Old Uyghur alphabet – Uyghur
• Osmanya – Somali
• Runic alphabet – Germanic languages
• Ol Cemet' – Santali
• Tai Lue – Lue
• Uyghur Arabic alphabet – Uyghur
• Vah  – Bassa
• Zaghawa  – Zaghawa

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
• Chosŏn'gŭl/Hangul – Korean
• Osage  – Osage
• Shavian alphabet
• Tengwar (a fictional script)
• Visible Speech (a phonetic script)
• Stokoe notation for American Sign Language
• SignWriting for sign languages
• IsiBheqe SoHlamvu for Southern Bantu languages

Linear alphabets arranged into syllabic blocks

• Hangul – Korean
• Great Lakes Algonquian syllabics – Fox, Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, Ojibwe
• IsiBheqe SoHlamvu – Southern Bantu languages

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)
• Catalan 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)
• Israeli 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) representing characters in the Latin alphabet.
• American Morse code (defunct)
• Optical telegraphy (defunct)
• Flag semaphore – (made by moving hand-held flags)

Alphasyllabary

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 alphasyllabary regardless of whether the vowels look like diacritics or full letters. The vast majority of alphasyllabaries are found from India to Southeast Asia and belong historically to the Brāhmī family. The term abugida is derived from the first characters of the abugida in Ge'ez: አ (A) ቡ (bu) ጊ (gi) ዳ (da) — (compare with alphabet). Unlike abjads, the diacritical marks and systemic modifications of the consonants are not optional.

Alphasyllabary of the Brāhmī family

A Palaung manuscript written in a Brahmic abugida

• Ahom
• Brahmi – Prakrit,
• Balinese
• Batak – Toba and other Batak languages
• Baybayin – Formerly used for Ilocano, Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Tagalog, Bikol languages, Visayan languages, and possibly other Philippine languages
• Bengali – Bengali, Assamese, Meithei, Bishnupriya Manipuri, also for Khasi, Sylheti, Kokborok and Hajong and formerly for Bodo, Karbi and Mising
• Bhaiksuki
• Buhid
• Burmese – Burmese, Karen, Pwo, Mon, and Shan
• Cham
• Chakma
• Dehong – Dehong Dai
• Devanagari – Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi, Nepali, and many other languages of northern India
• Dhives Akuru
• Grantha – Sanskrit
• Gujarati – Gujarati, Kutchi, Vasavi, Sanskrit, Avestan
• Gurmukhi script – Punjabi
• Hanunó'o
• Javanese
• Kaithi
• Kannada – Kannada, Tulu, Konkani, Kodava
• Kawi
• Khojki
• Khotanese
• Khudawadi
• Khmer
• Lao
• Lepcha
• Leke – Eastern Pwo, Western Pwo, and Karen
• Limbu
• Lontara’ – Buginese, Makassar, and Mandar
• Mahajani
• Malayalam
• Marchen – Zhang-Zhung
• Meetei Mayek
• Modi – Marathi
• Multani – Saraiki
• Nandinagari – Sanskrit
• Newar – Nepal Bhasa
• New Tai Lue
• Odia
• Phags-pa – Mongolian, Chinese, and other languages of the Yuan Dynasty Mongol Empire
• Ranjana – Nepal Bhasa, Prakrit
• Rejang
• Sharada – prakrit
• Siddham – used to write Prakrit
• Sinhala
• Saurashtra
• Soyombo
• Sundanese
• Syloti Nagri – Sylheti
• Tagbanwa – Aborlan, Calamian, and Central Tagbanwa languages and other languages of Palawan
• Tai Le
• Tai Dam
• Tai Tham – Khün, and Northern Thai
• Takri
• Tamil – Tamil, Kanikkaran, Badaga, Irula, Paniya (Grantha), Saurashtra
• Telugu
• Thai
• Tibetan
• Tigalari – Sanskrit, Tulu
• Tirhuta – Maithili
• Tocharian
• Vatteluttu
• Zanabazar Square
• Zhang zhung scripts

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 (Based on Devanagari. refer to origins).
• Ethiopic – Amharic, Ge’ez, Tigrigna
• Kharoṣṭhī – Gandhari, Sanskrit
• Mandombe
• Meroitic – Meroë
• Mwangwego
• Pitman Shorthand
• Pollard script – Miao
• 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. For example, representing [o] with an under-ring, and final [k] with an over-cross, [sok] would be written as s̥̽.

• Róng – Lepcha

Vowel-based abugidas

In a few 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
• Tenji (Japanese Braille) – Japanese
• Pahawh Hmong – Hmong

List of writing scripts by adoption

Main article: List of languages by writing system

Name of script	Type	Number of characters	Population actively using (in millions)	Languages associated with	Regions with predominant usage
Latin Latin	Alphabet	23 (classical)	over 6120	Latin and Romance languages (Italian, French, Franco-Provençal, Occitan, Catalan, Portuguese, Galician, Spanish, Rhaeto-Romance languages, Sardinian and Romanian), Germanic languages (English, Dutch, German, Nordic languages), Chinese (Mandarin Pinyin), Austronesian languages (Indonesian, Filipino, Malay, Polynesian languages), West and Southwest Slavic languages (including Polish), Baltic languages (Latvian and Lithuanian), Niger-Congo languages (including Swahili, Yoruba, and Zulu), Turkish, Somali, Albanian, Vietnamese, Hungarian, Maltese, Finnic (including Estonian and Finnish) and Sami languages, others	Worldwide
Chinese 汉字 漢字	Logographic	>50,000	1340	Mandarin, Yue, Wu, Gan, Min, Hakka, Xiang, Jin, Pinghua, Huizhou and other Chinese languages (Chinese characters), Japanese (Kanji), Korean (Hanja), Vietnamese (Chu Nom), Zhuang (Sawndip), Okinawan (Okinawan), Mulam	China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia (Chinese Malaysians), Japan, South Korea, Indonesia (Chinese Indonesians), Hong Kong
Devanagari देवनागरी	Abugida	44	820+	Angika, Awadhi, Bhili, Bhojpuri, Bodo, Chhattisgarhi, Dogri, Haryanvi, Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Magahi, Maithili, Marathi, Mundari, Nepali, Newar, Pali, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, others	India (native in Hindi Belt, Goa, Maharashtra), Nepal
Arabic العربية	Abjad	28	660+	Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Balochi, Malayan (Jawi), Acehnese (Jawi), Uyghur, Kazakh (in China), Kurdish, Azeri (in Iran), Javanese (Pegon), Sundanese (Pegon), others	Middle East and North Africa, Pakistan, India (7 states), China (Xinjiang), Brunei (co-official with Latin), Malaysia, Indonesia (religious uses only)
Bengali বাংলা	Abugida	28	300	Sanskrit, Bengali, Assamese, Kokborok, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Khasi, Meitei Manipuri, Hajong, Chakma, Maithili (historical use), Angika (historical use), Sylheti and others.	Bangladesh, and India (West Bengal, Mizoram, Jharkhand, Tripura, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Andaman and Nicobar Islands)
Cyrillic Кириллица	Alphabet	33	250	Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, Belarusian, Kazakh, others	Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Mongolia, the Russian Far East
Kana かな カナ	Syllabary	46	120	Japanese, Okinawan, Ainu, Palauan, other Japonic languages	Japan
Javanese ꦗꦮ	Abugida	53	80	Javanese, Cirebonese, Madurese, Sundanese	Indonesia (Central Java, East Java, Special Region of Yogyakarta, Cirebon, Cirebon Regency, Indramayu Regency), Javanese diaspora
Chosŏn'gŭl/Hangul 한글 조선글	Alphabet, featural	24	78.7	Korean, Cia-Cia, Jeju	North Korea, South Korea, and Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of China, Indonesia (Baubau)
Telugu తెలుగు	Abugida	60	74	Telugu, Sanskrit, Gondi	Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Puducherry (India)
Tamil தமிழ்	Abugida	30	70	Tamil, Kanikkaran, Badaga, Irula, Paniya, Sanskrit, Saurashtra	Tamil Nadu (India), Puducherry (India), Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Mauritius
Gujarati ગુજરાતી	Abugida	47	48	Gujarati, Kutchi, Avestan, Bhili, Bhilori, Gamit, Chowdhary, Kukna, Bhili, Varli, Vasavi	India, Pakistan
Kannada ಕನ್ನಡ	Abugida	51 (or 50 or 49)	45	Kannada, Tulu, Kodava, Badaga, Beary, Sanketi, Konkani, Sanskrit	Karnataka (India)
Burmese မြန်မာ	Abugida	26	39	Burmese, Pali, Sanskrit	Myanmar
Malayalam മലയാളം	Abugida	51	38	Malayalam, Sanskrit, Paniya, Betta Kurumba, Ravula	Kerala, Puducherry (India)
Thai ไทย	Abugida	68	38	Thai, Northern Thai, Southern Thai, Northern Khmer, and Isan, Kelantan-Pattani Malay, Pali, Sanskrit, others	Thailand
Sundanese ᮞᮥᮔ᮪ᮓ	Abugida	44	38	Sundanese, Bantenese, Baduy	West Java and Banten (Indonesia)
Zhuyin Fuhao (a.k.a. Bopomofo) ㄅㄆㄇㄈ ㄓㄨㄧㄣ ㄈㄨˊㄏㄠˋ	Alphabet, Semisyllabary	37 (plus four tone marks)	23	A phonetic transcription system used in Taiwan for Mandarin Chinese, studied mainly by schoolchildren.	Taiwan
Gurmukhi ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ	Abugida	35	22	Sanskrit, Punjabi, Sant Bhasha, Sindhi	Punjab (India)
Odia ଉତ୍କଳ	Abugida	64	21	Odia, others	Odisha (India)
Ge'ez ግዕዝ	Abugida	30	18	Ethiopian Semitic languages, Blin, Meʻen, Oromo, Anuak	Ethiopia, Eritrea
Sinhala සිංහල	Abugida	58	14.4	Sinhala, Vedda	Sri Lanka
Hebrew עברית	Abjad	22	14	Hebrew, Yiddish, other Jewish languages	Israel
Greek Ελληνικό	Alphabet	24	13.4	Greek, others	Greece, Cyprus, Southern Albania;
Armenian Հայոց	Alphabet	39	12	Armenian, Lomavren	Armenia
Khmer ខ្មែរ	Abugida	35	11.4	Khmer, Pali, others	Cambodia
Batak ᯅᯖᯂ᯲	Abugida	20 (Toba Batak)	8.5	Batak languages	North Sumatra (Indonesia)
Lontara ᨒᨚᨈᨑ	Abugida	23	7.6	Buginese, Makassar, Mandar	Indonesia (South Sulawesi and West Sulawesi)
Balinese ᬩᬮᬶ	Abugida	18 (basic)	6	Balinese and Sasak (modified)	Indonesia (Bali and Lombok, East Nusa Tenggara)
Tibetan བོད་	Abugida	30	5	Tibetan, Dzongkha, Ladakhi, Sikkimese, Balti, Tamang, Sherpa, Yolmo, Tshangla	Tibet Autonomous Region of China, Bhutan, and India (Jammu and Kashmir, Sikkim, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh)
Georgian ქართული	Alphabet	33	4.5	Georgian and other Kartvelian languages	Georgia
Modern Yi ꆈꌠ	Syllabary	1165	4	Nuosu Yi, other Yi languages	Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture and Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture of China
Lao ລາວ	Abugida	26	2	Lao, Isan, others Laos
Mongolian ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ	Alphabet	26	2	Mongolian, Manchu (Manchu), Evenki (experimentally)	China (Inner Mongolia)
Tifinagh ⵜⵉⴼⵉⵏⴰⵖ	Abjad	33	1	Berber languages	North Africa
Tai Le ᥖᥭᥰᥘᥫᥴ	Abugida	35	0.72	Tai Nüa	Yunnan (China)
New Tai Lue ᦑᦟᦹᧉ	Abugida	83	0.55	Tai Lü	Yunnan (China)
Syriac ܣܘܪܝܬ	Abjad	22	0.4	Syriac, Aramaic, Neo-Aramaic, Suriyani Malayalam, nothers	West Asia
Thaana ދިވެހި	Abugida	24	0.35	Maldivian	Maldives
Inuktitut ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ	Abugida	14 (each of the 14 consonants has 6 modes depending on the vowel)	0.035	Inuktitut, other Inuit languages	Canada (North of Tree Line)
Cherokee ᏣᎳᎩ	Syllabary	86	0.02	Cherokee	United States

Undeciphered systems that may be writing

Main article: Undeciphered writing systems

These 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. 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 many cases it is doubtful that they are actually writing. The Vinča symbols appear to be proto-writing, and quipu may have recorded only numerical information. There are doubts that Indus is writing, and the Phaistos Disc has so little content or context that its nature is undetermined.

• Ba–Shu scripts
• Byblos syllabary – the city of Byblos
• Isthmian (apparently logosyllabic)
• Indus – Indus Valley Civilization
• Quipu – Inca Empire (possibly numerical only)
• Khitan small script – Khitan
• Cretan hieroglyphs
• Linear A (a syllabary) – Minoan
• Mixtec – Mixtec (perhaps pictographic)
• 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)
• 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 exist which may be written in an invented writing system, a cipher of an existing writing system or may only be a hoax.

• Dorabella Cipher
• Hamptonese
• Rohonc Codex
• Voynich manuscript

Other

Asemic writing is generally meaningless, though it sometimes contains ideograms or pictograms.

Phonetic alphabets

This section lists alphabets used to transcribe phonetic or phonemic sound; not to be confused with spelling alphabets like the ICAO spelling 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
• Night writing
• Morse code
• Flag semaphore
• Optical telegraphy

Alternative alphabets

• Gregg shorthand
• Initial Teaching Alphabet
• Pitman shorthand
• Quikscript

Fictional writing systems

• Alteran
• Ath (alphabet)
• Aurebesh
• Cirth
• D'ni
• Gallifreyan
• Goa'uld
• Heptapod B, used by the extraterrestrials in the film Arrival
• Hymmnos
• Hylian
• Klingon
• On Beyond Zebra!
• Sarati
• Tengwar, used to write Quenya, Sindarin and other of J.R.R. Tolkien's Elvish languages
• The "Tennobet", used to write the Orokin language in the Digital Extremes MMO Warframe
• Unown
• Unnamed script used in Puella Magi Madoka Magica
• Utopian, in Thomas More's Utopia
• The written language in Hunter x Hunter
• Ancient Language used in the Tellius World of the series Fire Emblem

For animal use

• Yerkish uses "lexigrams" to communicate with non-human primates.

For sign languages

• SignWriting
• si5s
• ASLwrite and Stokoe notation for American Sign Language(ASL)

See also

• Constructed script
• Grapheme
• List of inventors of writing systems
• List of ISO 15924 codes
• List of languages by first written accounts
• List of languages by writing system
• Unicode

External links

• Omniglot: a guide to writing systems
• Ancient Scripts: Home: Site with some introduction to different writing systems and group them into (origins/types/families/regions/timeline/A to Z)
• Michael Everson's Alphabets of Europe
• Deseret Alphabet
• ScriptSource - a dynamic, collaborative reference to the writing systems of the world