Честит European Day of Languages – WORLD LITERATURES са темата, с която днес ще отбележим този международен празник
There are dozens of writing systems (alphabets, syllables, logograms) in the world today, but we can group them into several main types:
🔠 Alphabetic scripts – In them, each character means one phoneme (sound)
- Latin – the most widespread in the world (Europe, America, Africa, part of Asia).
- Cyrillic – in Eastern Europe and Eurasia (Bulgaria, Russia, Serbia, Mongolia, etc.).
- Greek alphabet – Greece.
- Armenian alphabet – Armenia.
- Georgian alphabet – Georgia.
- Korean (Hangul) – South and North Korea.
🔤 Abjads – Writings in which they are mainly written consonants, and the vowels are secondary or implied
- Arabic alphabet – Middle East, North Africa, parts of Asia.
- Hebrew alphabet (Hebrew).
- Syrian, Phoenician and other historical systems.
🔡 Abugidas – The signs denote a consonant with an embedded vowel sound; the vowel is changed by additions
- Devanagari – India (Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi).
- Ethiopian script (Geez) – Amharic, Tigrinya.
- Brahmi and derivatives – most scripts in South and Southeast Asia (Thai, Khmer, Burmese, etc.).
🔡 Abugidas) – The signs denote a consonant with an embedded vowel sound; the vowel is changed by additions
- Devanagari – India (Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi).
- Ethiopian script (Geez) – Amharic, Tigrinya.
- Brahmi and derivatives – most scripts in South and Southeast Asia (Thai, Khmer, Burmese, etc.).
🈶 Logographic systems – The signs mean words or morphemes, not sounds
- Chinese characters (hanzi) – China.
- Kanji – used in Japanese writing (along with hiragana and katakana – syllabic alphabets).
- Hancha – historically in Korea.
- Egyptian hieroglyphs (historical).
📜 Syllabaries (Syllabaries) – Each character means one syllable
- Japanese hiragana and katakana.
- Cherokee (North America).
- Linear B (ancient Greece, historical).
🗺️ Summary
🌍The Latin alphabet is dominant today.
🌍Cyrillic, Arabic, and Chinese scripts are the second most common.
🌍Many regional scripts (e.g. Georgian, Armenian, Ethiopian) are unique cultural treasures.