The Alphabets and Writing Systems of the World (2006)

This map, created by a Wikimedia Commons user Nickshanks in 2006 and translated by Sergio in 2019, shows the alphabets and writing systems used by different languages around the world.

Modern writing systems can be classified into six groups:

• Logographic, those that represent morphemes, as is the case with Chinese writing.
• Syllabic, those representing syllables, such as Japanese kana.
• Alphabetical, which represent vowel and consonant phonemes, like the Latin alphabet.
• Abugida, those representing consonant phonemes with vowels, such as Devanagari in Hindi or Ethiopian.
• Abyad, those that represent only consonant phonemes, such as the Arabic or Hebrew alphabets.
• Characteristic, those representing a phonetic feature, such as Korean Hangul.

The map shows some writing systems with their own colour, such as Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Hangul and Arabic. Others, however, are grouped according to alphabet type, such as abugidas (except Devanagari), syllabaries and abjads (except Arabic).

Sources

• World alphabets and writing systems
• World alphabets & writing systems EN