Index of languages by writing system

This is a list of the languages featured on Omniglot arranged by the writing systems with which they are written. This is not an exhaustive list of all the languages written with each writing system. Only some writing systems have been adapted to write more than one language. The most widely used writing systems are the Latin, Cyrillic and Arabic alphabets.

Some languages have been written with a number of different writing systems over the years. For example, in Central Asia many languages were originally written with the Arabic alphabet, then switched to the Latin alphabet during the 1920s, then to the Cyrillic alphabet during the 1930s or 1940s. Some of them switched back to the Latin alphabet during the 1990s or in the early 21st century.

Please note: alphabets used to write only one language, such as Armenian, Korean and Thai, are not included here. This page includes only those alphabets that used to write more than one language. If you can't find a particular writing system or language here, please look in the A-Z index.

Writing systems

Arabic, Baybayin, Bengali, Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Chinese, Cyrillic, Greek, Devanagari, Ge'ez (Ethiopic), Georgian (Mkhedruli), Hebrew, Latin, Oriya, Tifinagh


العربية

Arabic alphabet

Arabic, Azeri, Baluchi, Bosnian, Dari, Hausa, Kabyle, Kashmiri, Kazakh, Kurdish, Kyrghyz, Malay, Morisco, Pashto, Persian/Farsi, Punjabi, Shabaki, Sindhi, Siraiki, Tatar, Turkish, Urdu, Uyghur

Some of these languages, such as Bosnian and Turkish, were once written with the Arabic alphabet, but nowadays are normally written with a different alphabet, such as Latin or Cyrillic.


Ⴋხედრული

Baybayin syllabary

Ilocano, Kapampangan, Tagalog


বাংলা

Bengali alphabet (Eastern Nagari / Eastern Neo-Brahmic script)

Assamese, Bengali, Manipuri, Mundari, Sylheti


ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ

Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics

Blackfoot, Carrier, Cree, Inuktitut, Naskapi, Ojibwe


漢字

Chinese script

Modern Standard Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese (kanji), Korean (hanja), Vietnamese (chữ-nôm)


Кириллица

Cyrillic alphabet

Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Altay, Archi, Avar, Azeri, Balkar, Bashkir, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Buryat, Chechen, Chukchi, Chuvash, Crimean Tatar, Dargwa, Dungan, Erzya, Even, Evenki, Gagauz, Ingush, Kabardian, Kalmyk, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Khanty, Kildin Sami, Komi, Koryak, Kumyk, Kurdish, Kyrghyz, Lak, Lezgi, Lingua Franca Nova, Macedonian, Mansi, Mari, Moksha, Moldovan, Mongolian, Nanai, Nenets, Nivkh, Old Church Slavonic, Ossetian, Russian, Ruthenian, Serbian, Slovio, Tabassaran, Tajik, Tatar, Tsez, Turkmen, Tuvan, Ubykh, Udmurt, Ukrainian, Uyghur, Uzbek, Votic, Yakut, Yukaghir, Yupik


दवनागरी

Devanagari alphabet

Hindi, Marathi, Mundari, Nepali, Pali, Sanskrit, Sindhi


ፊደል

Ge'ez (Ethiopic) script

Amharic, Ge'ez, Tigrinya


Ⴋხედრული

Georgian (Mkhedruli) alphabet

Georgian, Laz, Svan


Greek alphabet

Greek alphabet

Arvanitic, Greek

Today the Greek alphabet is used to write Greek and occasionally Arvanitic, however at various times in the past it has been used to write such languages as Lydian, Phrygian, Thracian, Ancient Macedonian, Gaulish, Hebrew, Arabic, Old Ossetic, Albanian, Turkish, Aromanian, Gagauz, Surguch and Urum.


עברית / עִבְרִית

Hebrew alphabet

Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Ladino, Yiddish


Latin alphabet

Abenaki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Ainu, Akan, Alabama, Albanian, Aleut, Alsatian, Apache, Aragonese, Aranese, Arapaho, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic, Asturian, Aymara, Azeri, Bambara, Bashkir, Basque, Belarusian, Bemba, Bikol, Bislama, Breton, Burushaski, Catalan, Cayuga, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chechen, Cheyenne, Cimbrian, Chichewa, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Comanche, Cornish, Corsican, Cape Verdean Creole, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Delaware, Dholuo, Dinka, Drehu, Duala, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Ewe, Ewondo, Eyak, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Filipino, Finnish, Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Friulian, Ga, Gagauz, Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gooniyandi, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Guarani, Gugadja/Kukatja, Gwich’in, Haida, Haitian Creole, Hän, Hausa, Hawaiian, Herero, Hiligaynon, Hixkaryana, Hopi, Hotcąk, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, Igbo, Ilocano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Iñupiaq, Irish, Italian, Jamaican Creole, Javanese, Jèrriais, Kabyle, Kaingang, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kapampangan, Karakalpak, Karamojong, Karelian, Kashubian, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klallam, Klamath, Kurdish, Kwakiutl, Lingala, Latin, Latino sine Flexione, Latvian, Lingua Franca Nova, Lithuanian, Livonian, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Māori, Marshallese, Meriam Mir, Miami, Mi'kmaq, Mirandese, Mohawk, Montagnais, Mundari, Murrinh-Patha, Nagamese, Nahuatl, Nama, Naskapi, Navajo, Naxi, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Niuean, Noongar, Norwegian, Northern Sotho, Novial, Nǀuu, Occidental, Occitan, Okinawan, O'odham, Oneida, Old Norse, OshiWambo, Ossetian, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Pirahã, Pitjantjatjara, Polish, Pomo (Eastern), Portuguese, Potawatomi, Quechua, Rarotongan, Rotokas, Romanian, Romansh, Romany, Rotuman, Saami/Sami, Saanich, Samoan, Sango, Sardinian, Scots, Scottish Gaelic, Seychelles Creole, Shavante, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Sioux, Slovak, Slovene, Slovio, Somali, Sorbian, Southern Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swati/Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tatar, Taiwanese, Tetum, Tlingit, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tsotsil, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen, Tuscarora, Tuvaluan, Tuvan, Twi, Uyghur, Venetian, Vietnamese, Volapük, Võro, Wakhi, Walloon, Warlpiri, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik-Mungkan, Wiradjuri, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Yolngu, Yoruba, Zapotec, Zhuang, Zulu


Oriya alphabet

Oriya alphabet

Mundari, Oriya


Tifinagh alphabet

Kabyle, Tamazight


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