A guide to all the wonderful and interesting information about writing systems and languages you can find on Omniglot.
Writing systems | Constructed scripts | Languages | Language learning | Multilingual pages | Useful phrases Articles | Book store | Links | FAQs | Gallery | Puzzles | News | Downloads | Miscellaneous | My other sites
Information about over 150 different writing systems. Each page contains an illustration of a writing system; details of its origin, usage, notable features and the language(s) written with it; a sample text, and useful links.
This section is divided as follows:
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Alphabets and other writing systems invented by visitors to this site, and that appear in books, TV programmes, films and computer games.
Constructed scripts for: Ainu | Arabic | Chinese languages | Dutch | English | Hawaiian | Japanese | Korean | Malay & Indonesian | Persian | Russian | Sanskrit | Spanish | Tagalog | Taino | Turkish | Vietnamese | Welsh | Other natural languages | Colour-based scripts | Phonetic/universal scripts | Constructed scripts for constructed languages | Adaptations of existing alphabets | Fictional alphabets | Magical alphabets | A-Z index | How to submit a constructed script
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Details of many different languages, including their pronunciation, usage, status and sample texts.
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A collection of advice, suggestions, tips and techniques for learning languages.
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A brief introduction to Unicode, how to type accented letters and other special characters and a number of pages designed to demonstrate Unicode:
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A collection of useful phrases suitable for a variety of situations in many different languages with sound files for quite a few of them.
Welcome | Hello | Hello (on the phone) | Good morning | Good afternoon | Good evening | Good night | How are you? | Long time no see | Please | Thank you | Excuse me | Sorry | Yes, No | Maybe | Goodbye | Bon voyage
Pleased to meet you | What's your name? | Where are you from?
Do you understand? | I understand | I don't understand | Please say that again | Please speak more slowly | Please write it down | Do you speak English? | Do you speak ...? | Do you speak a language other than [your own]? | Speak to me in ... | How do you say ...? | I don't know
Go away! | Leave me alone! | Help! | Fire! | Stop! | Call the police!
Merry Christmas | Happy New Year | Happy Easter | Happy Birthday | Congratulations
Good luck | Cheers! | Have a nice day | Have a nice weekend | Bon appetit | How much is this? | Would you like to dance? | Do you come here often? | Where's the toilet? | Get well soon | I miss you | I love you | This gentleman/lady will pay for everything | One language is never enough
My hovercraft is full of eels | Stop the world, I want to get off! | Say cheese! | Colorless green ideas sleep furiously | I am the king of the chickens | Thingamajig
The phrase finder enables you to view the useful phrases in any combination of two languages. The phrases are available in over 300 different languages.
Telling the time | Days of the week | Months of the year | Seasons
Weather words | Family words | Terms of endearment | Idioms | Tongue twisters | Proverbs and sayings | Signs | Compass directions | Names of the seven dwarfs | Zodiac signs | Computer parts | Animal sounds
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Articles about language learning, languages, and related topics.
Writing systems | Language and language learning | Motivation | Being and becoming bilingual | Chinese | English | French | German | Greek | Hebrew | Indonesian | Italian | Latin | Portuguese | Spanish | Other languages | Minority and endangered languages | Reviews of language courses and books | Teaching languages | Language and culture | Particular languages: Translation and interpreting | Multilingual websites, databases and coding | History | Travel | Food | Spoof articles
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A collection of books about writing, language, linguistics and related topics gathered together in one place for your convenience. By buying something here you'll be helping to support this site.
Writing systems, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Mayan, Ogham, Runes, Shorthand, Numbers and numerals, Calligraphy, Punctuation, Reading
Origins of language, Language and languages, Learning languages, Idioms, Language extinction, Bilingualism / Multilingualism, Algonquian languages, Celtic languages, English, Germanic languages, Romance languages, Slavic languages, Turkic languages, Constructed languages
Linguistics, Phonetics & Phonology, Paleolinguistics
Livres au sujet de langage et linguistique (en français)
Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Balinese, Basque, Bengali, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Burmese/Myanmar, Cambodian, Cantonese, Catalan, Cherokee, Chinese, Cornish, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dari, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Gothic, Greek (Modern), Gujarati, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Hokkien, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kazakh, Korean, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Lao, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malayalam, Maltese, Mandarin Chinese, Manx (Gaelic), Māori, Mayan, Mongolian, Nahuatl, Norwegian, Occitan, Old Church Slavonic, Old English, Old Norse, Pashto, Persian/Farsi, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rapa Nui, Romanian, Russian, Samoan, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Serbian, Shanghainese, Sicilian, Sindarin, Sinhala, Sioux (Lakota/Dakota), Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Taiwanese, Tajik, Tamil, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uyghur, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Welsh, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, Zulu
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A collection of links to sites containing information about writing, language and related topics.
Ancient Egyptian | Arabic | Celtic languages | Chinese | English | French | German | Greek | Hebrew | Irish | Italian | Japanese | Korean | Portuguese | Russian | Scottish Gaelic | Spanish | Welsh | Tolkien's languages and alphabets
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Answers to the questions I receive most often. Please read this page before contacting me.
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Gallery of language and writing-related art sent in by visitors to this site. If you would like to contribute to this section, please contact me.
Questions submitted by visitors to this site which I'm unable to answer.
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Announcements of new pages/sections and significant improvements to existing pages. Also includes occasional links to writing and language-related news on other sites.
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Fonts for some of the constructed writing systems on this site.
Script charts - the Excel spreadsheets I use to produce the alphabet and pronunciation charts.
Audio recordings - a list of some of the sound files available for download on this site, including collections of useful phrases in various phrases.
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Details of the books used as sources of information for this site.
A list of the fonts used on this site.
Details of how many visitors Omniglot gets.
Information about Omniglot and its creator.
About this site | Omniglot - a potted history | About me | My language learning adventures | My singing adventures | My songs | My tunes | My musical adventures | My juggling adventures
A few photos of me, my friends, and places I've visted and lived in.
How to contact me.
Articles and podcasts about Omniglot and interviews with its founder, Simon Ager.
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Offshoots of Omniglot include:
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Omniglot is not affiliated with any academic or other institution. It is the creation of one man, Simon Ager, with corrections, suggestions and additional material provided by visitors. It started way back in 1998 as a hobby which I worked on in my spare time, but since June 2008 I have been working on it full-time and it is now my main source of income.
While I make every effort to ensure that the information is accurate, there will inevitably be some errors and mistakes. If you spot any, please contact me. Your input is always welcome and very much appreciated.
If you would like to use any of the information or images from this site, please contact me.
All the material is available to you free of charge. I also do my best to answer your questions and provide advice on a range of writing and language-related topics.
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You can help to support this site by making a donation:
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If you need to type in many different languages, the Q International Keyboard can help. It enables you to type almost any language that uses the Latin, Cyrillic or Greek alphabets, and is free.
If you like this site and find it useful, you can support it by making a donation via PayPal or Patreon, or by contributing in other ways. Omniglot is how I make my living.
Note: all links on this site to Amazon.com
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