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, Tifinagh

Arabic alphabet

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

Please note: 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.

Baybayin syllabary

Ilocano, Kapampangan, Tagalog

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

Bengali, Assamese

Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics

Blackfoot, Carrier, Cree, Inuktitut, Naskapi, Ojibwe

Chinese script

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

Cyrillic alphabet

Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, 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

Devanagari alphabet

Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Pali, Sanskrit, Sindhi

Ge'ez (Ethiopic) script

Amharic, Ge'ez, Tigrinya

Georgian (Mkhedruli) alphabet

Georgian, Laz, Svan

Greek alphabet

Today the Greek alphabet is used only to write Greek, 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.

Hebrew alphabet

Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Ladino, Yiddish

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Latin alphabet

Abenaki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Ainu, Akan, Alabama, Albanian, Aleut, Alsatian, Apache, Aragonese, Aranese, Arapaho, Aromanian, Arrernte, Asturian, Aymara, Azeri, Bambara, 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, Faroese, Fijian, 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, Jèrriais, Kabyle, Kaingang, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kapampangan, Karakalpak, Karelian, Kashubian, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klallam, Klamath, Kurdish, Kwakiutl, Lingala, Latin, Latvian, Lingua Franca Nova, Lithuanian, Livonian, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Māori, Marshallese, Meriam Mir, Mi'kmaq, Mirandese, Mohawk, Montagnais, Murrinh-Patha, Nagamese, Nahuatl, Nama, Naskapi, Navajo, Naxi, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Niuean, Noongar, Norwegian, Novial, 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, 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, Tsonga, 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, Zhuang, Zulu

Tifinagh alphabet

Kabyle, Tamazight

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