Linguistics Stack Exchange
Linguistics Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [alphabets]

A set of letters that represent phonemes, used to write one or more languages.

An alphabet supports both consonants and vowels. Well known alphabets are the Greek, Cyrillic, Latin, Armenian, and Georgian alphabet.

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Why do some alphabets have special final forms for some letters?

Some alphabets, e.g. the Greek, Hebrew and Arabic alphabets, have different forms for some letters when they appear at the end of the word. E.g. in Greek, the letter sigma (σ) appears as a ς when used at the end of a word; in Hebrew, a couple of…
Glorfindel
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What is the origin of letters corresponding to consonant clusters?

The Greek alphabet has ψ (psi) and ξ (ksi) , both letters correspond to a bi-consonantal sequence. Latin has X, Cyrillic alphabet has Щ which in some languages corresponds to ʃt͡ʃ, etc. Normally, an alphabet is phonemic (before the language changes…
iddober
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Is left-to-right scripting better than right-to-left?

I'm Iranian and here, Arabic script is what is used. many litterateurs believe that this script is not good for the Persian language and many of them think that it should be changed. one of the reasons that I've heard many times is that…
Peyman
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Is there any method of assigning a numeral score to the extent to which a given alphabet is phonemic?

Is there any method of assigning a numerical score to the extent to which a given alphabet is phonemic? If so, then obviously, the score for a given alphabet would vary across the languages that it was used to transcribe. A great many scores…
James Grossmann
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What letters are used in different European languages for naming things by letters?

What letters are used in different European languages for naming things by letters? In Finnish, all 29 letters (also Å, Ä, Ö) are used in naming. But in Czech, letters with diacritics (e.g. Á, Š, Ů) are not used. For example, are special letters…
Poiponen
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Why are E and É both part of the Hungarian and Icelandic alphabets but the English and French alphabets only have E?

The letters "E" and "É" occur in English, French, Hungarian, Icelandic, and other languages. However, the Hungarian and Icelandic alphabets include both "E" and "É", but the English and French ones only have "E". The letter "é" is widely used in…
SarahSE
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Is there a reconstruction of the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet that's consistent with meaningful translations of all known Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions?

Including those from Wadi el-Ḥol, Serabit el-Khadim, Lahun, and Bir en-Naṣb. I know that we can't yet prove that any reconstruction is accurate, but is there one that is at least consistent with meaningful translations of all of these inscriptions?…
Nathan Tracey
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Extract strings of a certain language from a dataframe in python

I have a pandas DataFrame that contains a column with sentences from different languages (6 languages). The DataFrame also contains a column which states which language the corresponding sentence belongs to. However, a sentence may contain non…
Michael Schroter
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Where do I get a list of all/many alphabets as strings or JSON or CSV data?

I have this manually typed in for "English: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ I'm trying to find a nice, authoritative source for "all" or "many" other alphabets. For example, Swedish would…
alpha pet
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Phonetic english alphabet using diacritical marks?

Does there exist a phonetic english alphabet constructed from standard english letters plus diacritical marks? For example, fine might be written fínė, such that í = aɪ and a letter with a dot is silent. I envisage using such an alphabet to give…
geometrikal
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Is the Latin alphabet the most widely known in the world?

Note: By "Latin alphabet," I'm referring to the 26 letters (A-Z) that English uses. Sorry if this is the wrong term (I don't want to call it the "English alphabet" since it's used by other languages like Spanish). Feel free to edit the question if…
Kyle Lin
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Were there pictographic glyph variants of letters, like multiocular O (ꙮ) for the word 'many-eyed' etc. in Cyrillic, in any other alphabets?

Were there pictographic glyphs of letters that were used in some special words in any other alphabets and languages? Like multiocular O (ꙮ) in word 'many-eyed', double monocular O (Ꙭ) for the plural or dual forms of the word 'eye', Crossed O (Ꚛ) for…
Julja Muvv
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Evolution of Greek San from Phoenician Tṣadē

It is generally agreed that the Greek letter San developed from the Phoenician Tṣadē, but I'm not sure I see the graphical similarity. The Phoenician form does bear some resemblance to the Greek form and even to the more common Greek form , but…
user17584
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Is there an alphabet containing exactly 25 letters?

I am looking for an alphabet containing exactly 25 letters. As we all know, the standard Latin alphabet contains some more letters than 25. As I would like the alphabet to contain exactly 25 letters, it would not suit me to simply remove a handful…
D. Ataro
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Can a new alphabet be created and added to the English language?

Does the English language, or any other language for that matter provide the flexibility to add or remove new alphabets?
user191142
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