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The lists and tables below summarize and compare the letter inventories of some of the
, [8">#n-cs">[8/sup> Danish alphabet">Danish, [9">#n-da">[9/sup> Dutch alphabet">Dutch, #n-nl">[10/sup> Emilian-Romagnol language">Emilian-Romagnol, Filipino alphabet">Filipino, #n-tl">[11/sup> Finnish alphabet">Finnish, French alphabet">French, [12">#n-fr">[12/sup>, German alphabet">German, #n-de">[13/sup> Greenlandic alphabet">Greenlandic, Hungarian alphabet">Hungarian, #n-hu">[15/sup> Javanese Latin alphabet">Javanese, Karakalpak alphabet">Karakalpak,
[63">#n-pap">[63/sup>, Polish alphabet">Polish #n-pl"> Portuguese, Quechua, Rhaeto-Romance languages">Rhaeto-Romance, Romanian alphabet">Romanian, Slovak alphabet">Slovak, [24">#n-sk">[24/sup> Spanish alphabet">Spanish, #n-es"> Sundanese, Swedish alphabet">Swedish, Tswana language">Tswana, #n-tn">[52/sup> Uyghur language">Uyghur, Venda language#Writing system">Venda, #n-ve">[51/sup> Võro alphabet">Võro, Walloon orthography">Walloon, #n-wa"> West Frisian, Xhosa alphabet">Xhosa, Standard Zhuang">Zhuang, Zulu alphabet">Zulu alphabets include all 26 letters, ''at least'' in their largest version.
Among alphabets for constructed languages the Interglossa and Occidental alphabet, Occidental alphabets include all 26 letters.
The
The lists and tables below summarize and compare the letter inventories of some of the Latin-script alphabet
A Latin-script alphabet (Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet) is an alphabet that uses Letter (alphabet), letters of the Latin script. The 21-letter archaic Latin alphabet and the 23-letter classical Latin alphabet belong to the oldest of this gr ...
s. In this article, the scope of the word "alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...
" is broadened to include letters with tone marks, and other diacritics
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
used to represent a wide range of orthographic traditions, without regard to whether or how they are sequenced in their alphabet or the table.
Parentheses indicate characters not used in modern standard orthographies of the languages, but used in obsolete and/or dialectal forms.
Letters contained in the ISO basic Latin alphabet
Alphabets that contain only ISO basic Latin letters
Among alphabets for natural languages the English, 6/sup> Indonesian, and Malay alphabets only use the 26 letters in both cases. Among alphabets for constructed languages the Ido andInterlingua
Interlingua (, ) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is a constructed language of the "naturalistic" variety, whose vocabulary, ...
alphabets only use the 26 letters, while Toki Pona
Toki Pona (; , , translated as 'the language of good') is a Philosophical language, philosophical, Artistic language, artistic, constructed language designed for its small vocabulary, simplicity, and ease of acquisition. It was created by Canadia ...
uses a 14-letter subset.
Extended by ligatures
* German (ß), Scandinavian (æ)Extended by diacritical marks
* Spanish (ñ), German (ä, ö, and ü)Extended by multigraphs
* Filipino (ng) *Old French
Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th ch)
, #n-eu">[4/sup>, Common Brittonic">Celtic British, Catalan alphabet">Catalan, #n-ca">[6/sup> Cornish language">Cornish, Czech alphabet">Czech
Czech may refer to:
* Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe
** Czech language
** Czechs, the people of the area
** Czech culture
** Czech cuisine
* One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus
*Czech (surnam ...Alphabets that contain all ISO basic Latin letters
Among alphabets for natural languages the Ch (digraph)">ch)Alphabets that contain all ISO basic Latin letters
Among alphabets for natural languages the Afrikaans, #n-af">[54/sup> Aromanian alphabet">Aromanian, Azerbaijani alphabet">Azerbaijani (some dialects) [53">#n-az">[53/sup>, Basque alphabet">Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...#n-kaa">[23/sup> Kurdish alphabet">Kurdish, Latin alphabet">Modern Latin, Luxembourgish language">Luxembourgish
Luxembourgish ( ; also ''Luxemburgish'', ''Luxembourgian'', ''Letzebu(e)rgesch''; ) is a West Germanic language that is spoken mainly in Luxembourg. About 400,000 people speak Luxembourgish worldwide.
The language is standardized and officiall ...
, Norwegian, [9">#n-da">[9/sup> Oromo language">Oromo [65">#n-om">[65/sup>, Papiamento orthography">Papiamento
Papiamento () or Papiamentu (; ) is a Portuguese-based creole language spoken in the Dutch Caribbean. It is the most widely spoken language on Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao ( ABC Islands).
The language, spelled in Aruba and in Bonaire and ...International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
(IPA) includes all 26 letters in their lowercase forms, although ''g'' is always Single-storey g, single-storey ('' ɡ'') in the IPA and never double-storey (
).
Alphabets that do not contain all ISO basic Latin letters
This list is based on official definitions of each alphabet. However, excluded letters might occur in non-integrated loan words and place names. The I is used in two distinct versions in Turkic languages: dotless (I ı) and dotted (İ i). They are considered different letters, and case conversion must take care to preserve the distinction. Irish traditionally does not write the dot, ortittle
The tittle or superscript dot is the dot on top of lowercase ''i'' and ''j''. In English writing the tittle is a diacritic which only appears as part of these glyphs, but diacritic dots can appear over other letters in various languages. In mos ...
, over the small letter ''i'', but the language makes no distinction here if a dot is displayed, so no specific encoding and special case conversion rule is needed as it is for Turkic alphabets.
Statistics
The chart above lists a variety of alphabets that do not officially contain all 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet. In this list, at least one language lacks one of every letter. For each of the 26 basic ISO Latin alphabet letters, the number of alphabets in the list above using it is as follows:Letters not contained in the ISO basic Latin alphabet
Some languages have extended the Latin alphabet with ligatures, modified letters, or digraphs. These symbols are listed below.Additional letters by type
Independent letters and ligatures
Letter–diacritic combinations: connected or overlaid
Other letters in collation order
The tables below are a work in progress. Eventually, table cells with light blue shading will indicate letter forms that do not constitute distinct letters in their associated alphabets. Please help with this task if you have the required linguistic knowledge and technical editing skill. For the order in which the characters are sorted in each alphabet, see collating sequence.Letters derived from A–H
Letters derived from I–O
Letters derived from P–Z
Notes
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ In classical Latin, the digraphs , , , were used in loanwords fromGreek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
, but they were not included in the alphabet. The ligatures , and , as well as lowercase letters, were added to the alphabet only in Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...
. The letters and were used as typographical variants of and , respectively, roughly until the Enlightenment.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ In Afrikaans, and are only (and and almost only) used in loanwords.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Albanian officially has the digraphs , which is sufficient to represent the Tosk dialect. The Gheg dialect supplements the official alphabet with 6 nasal vowels, namely .
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Arbëresh officially has the digraphs . Arbëresh has the distinctive , which is considered as a letter in its own right.
# ↑ ↑ Achomi also has the digraph .
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Azeri only uses the letter as a substitute for if the latter cannot be used (it was replaced by the schwa one year later because it is the most common letter). These cases should be avoided! The letters , , , , (or the digraph ), and the digraph are only used in certain dialects.
# ↑ Bambara also has the digraphs: (only present in loanwords), (also written as ; only present in some dialects). Historically, was used instead of , was used instead of , and was used instead of in Mali.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Basque has several digraphs: . The , which represents , is required for various words in its Zuberoan dialect. are used in foreign words, but are officially considered part of the alphabet.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Belarusian also has several digraphs: .
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Bislama also has the digraph .
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Breton also has the digraphs . are used in foreign words or digraphs only.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ Catalan also has a large number of digraphs: . The letters are only used in loanwords or the digraphs mentioned.
# ↑ ↑ The Alphabet of Chad also uses the unique letters and .
# ↑ ↑ ↑ Chamorro also has the digraphs . used only in digraphs.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Corsican has the trigraphs: .
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Croatian Gaj's alphabet also has the digraphs: . There are also four tone markers that are sometimes used on vowels to avoid ambiguity in homophones
A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning or in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (past tense of "rise"), or spelled differently, a ...
, but this is generally uncommon. Gaj's alphabet has been adopted by the Serbian and Bosnian standards and that it has complete one-to-one congruence with Serbian Cyrillic
The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (, ), also known as the Serbian script, (, ), is a standardized variation of the Cyrillic script used to write the Serbian language. It originated in medieval Serbia and was significantly reformed in the 19th cen ...
, where the three digraphs map to Cyrillic letters , and , respectively. Rarely and non-standardly, digraph is used instead of (like it was previously) (Cyrillic ). Montenegrin variant additionally uses and to indicate dialectal pronunciation.
# ↑ ↑ Cypriot Arabic also has the letters and .
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Czech also has the digraph , which is considered a separate letter and is sorted between and . While are considered separate letters, in collation they are treated merely as letters with diacritics. However, are sorted as separate letters. occur only in loanwords.
# ↑ Dakelh also contains the letter , which represents the glottal stop. The letters are only used in loanwords.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ The Norwegian alphabet is currently identical with the Danish alphabet. is part of both alphabets and is not used in native Danish or Norwegian words (except some proper names), but occurs quite frequently in well-established loanwords in Danish. Norwegian and Danish use in some words such as , although is considered a diacritic mark, while are letters. are not used except for names and some foreign words.
# ↑ Dinka also has the digraphs: . is only present in these digraphs. Dinka also used the letters (the last two which do not exist as precomposed characters in Unicode)
# ↑ ↑ ↑ The status of as a letter, ligature or digraph in Dutch is disputed. (outside the digraph ), , , and occur mostly in foreign words. Letters with grave and letters with circumflex occur only in loanwords.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ English generally now uses extended Latin letters only in loan words, such as ''fiancé'', ''fiancée'', and ''résumé''. Rare publication guides may still use the dieresis on words, such as "coöperate", rather than the now-more-common "co-operate" (UK) or "cooperate" (US). For a fuller discussion, see articles branching from Lists of English words of international origin, which was used to determine the diacritics needed for more unambiguous English. However, an or is sometimes used in poetry to show that a normally silent vowel is to be pronounced, as in "blessèd".
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Filipino [and also applicable in or to Tagalog, which is the topmost influencer and contributor language of Filipino, among the rest of the other influencer and contributor languages of the Philippines and foreign languages for Filipino's evolution, further development, and further enrichment; it (Tagalog) is also the de facto historical, traditional, and linguistic basis of Filipino and the de jure or official basis of Filipino's both predecessor Philippine national and official language/s or language phase/s or stage/s since 1937 (as a national language) and 1946 (as an official language), which is lastly institutionally, officially, and constitutionally named or renamed as or into Pilipino from 1959 to 1987, before being constitutionally and officially replaced by Filipino as the national and an official language since 1987] also uses the digraph , even originally with a large tilde that spanned both and (as in ) when a vowel follows the digraph. (The use of the tilde over the two letters is now rare). Only is required for everyday use (only in loanwords). The accented vowels are used in dictionaries to indicate pronunciation, and with tilde is only present in older works. and are new variants of and , respectively, and we're introduced in 2013 by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (Commission on the Filipino Language)'s "Ortograpiyang Pambansa" (National Orthography) and in 2014 by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (Commission on the Filipino Language)'s KWF Manwal sa Masinop na Pagsulat (KWF Manual on Provident Writing) to represent and preserve the schwa vowel sound /ə/ in non-Tagalog Filipino words of Philippine origin or from the other languages of the Philippines that natively have this vowel sound in their languages.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ Uppercase diacritics in French are often (incorrectly) thought of as being optional, but the official rules of French orthography designate accents on uppercase letters as obligatory in most cases. Many pairs or triplets are read as digraphs or trigraphs depending on context, but are not treated as such lexicographically: consonants ; vocal vowels ; nasal vowels ; the half-consonant --; half-consonant and vowel pairs . When rules that govern the French orthography are not observed, they are read as separate letters, or using an approximating phonology of a foreign language for loan words, and there are many exceptions. In addition, most final consonants are mute (including those consonants that are part of feminine, plural, and conjugation endings). and are only used in certain geographical names and proper names plus their derivatives, or, in the case of with diaeresis, newly proposed reforms, e.g. 'shambles' is derived from the proper name Capharnaüm. occurs only in Latin or Greek loanwords.
# ↑ Fula has as part of the alphabet in all countries except Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, and Sierra Leone (used only in loanwords in these countries). , which is used only in loanwords (but still part of the alphabet), is used in Guinea only. Fula also uses the digraphs (In Guinea spelled ), . are part of the alphabet in all countries except Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. is used in all countries except for Nigeria, where it is written . is used in all countries except for Nigeria. is used in Guinea, Mali, and Burkina Faso, is used in Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, and the digraph is used in Niger, Cameroon, Chad, Central African Republic, and Nigeria. The apostrophe is a letter (representing the glottal stop) in Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. are only used in loanwords, and are not part of the alphabet.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Galician. The standard of 1982 set also the digraphs ''gu'', ''qu'' (both always before and ), ''ch, ll, nh'' and ''rr''. In addition, the standard of 2003 added the grapheme as an alternative writing of . Although not marked (or forgotten) in the list of digraphs, they are used to represent the same sound, so the sequence should be considered as a digraph. The sequence represents a velar nasal (not a palatal as in Portuguese) and is restricted only to three feminine words, being either demonstrative
Demonstratives (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic, their meaning ...
or pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (Interlinear gloss, glossed ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the part of speech, parts of speech, but so ...
: ('a' and 'one'), ('some') and ('not one'). The Galician '' reintegracionismo'' movement uses it as in Portuguese. (outside of the Limia Baixa region), , , and are only used in loanwords, and are not part of the alphabet.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ German also retains most original letters in French loan words. Swiss German does not use any more. The long s
The long s, , also known as the medial ''s'' or initial ''s'', is an Archaism, archaic form of the lowercase letter , found mostly in works from the late 8th to early 19th centuries. It replaced one or both of the letters ''s'' in a double-''s ...
was in use until the mid-20th century. is usually not considered a separate letter, neither are the digraphs . only appears in the sequence and in loanwords, while and are found almost only in loan words. The capital () is almost never used. The accented letters (other than the letters , , , and ) are used only in loanwords.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Guaraní also uses digraphs and the glottal stop . are only used in these digraphs.
# ↑ Gwich'in also contains the letter , which represents the glottal stop. Gwich'in also uses the letters , which are not available as precomposed characters in Unicode. Gwich'in also uses the digraphs and trigraphs: . The letter is only used the digraphs above. are only used in loanwords.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Hausa has the digraphs: . Vowel length and tone are usually not marked. Textbooks usually use macron or doubled vowel to mark the length, grave to mark the low tone and circumflex to mark the falling tone. Therefore, in some systems, it is possible that macron is used in combination with grave or circumflex over a, e, i, o or u. The letter is only used in loanwords.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Hungarian also has the digraphs: ; and the trigraph: . are considered separate letters, but are collated as variants of .
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Irish traditionally used the dot diacritic () to mark lenition, forming the dotted letters ( "struck letters") . These have largely been replaced by the digraphs: except for in decorative or self-consciously traditional contexts. occurs in a small number of (mainly onomatopoeic) native words (e.g. "to quack") and colloquialisms ( for "screw"). only occur in loanwords and scientific terminology.
# ↑ Igbo writes alternatively as . Igbo has the digraphs: . is only used in the digraph before. Also, vowels take a grave accent, an acute accent, or no accent, depending on tone.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Italian also has the digraphs: . are used in foreign words, and are not part of the alphabet. is also used for native words derived from Latin and Greek; is also used for just a few native words, mainly names of persons (as in Jacopo) or of places (as in Jesolo and Jesi), in which represents . While it does not occur in ordinary running texts, geographical names on maps are often written only with acute accents. The circumflex is used on an -i ending that was anciently written -ii (or -ji, -ij, -j, etc.) to distinguish homograph plurals and verb forms: e.g. form , from .
# ↑ Karakalpak also has the digraphs: . are used in foreign words.
# ↑ Kazakh also has the digraphs: . and the digraph are used in foreign words.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Latvian also has the digraphs: . ''Dz'' and ''dž'' are occasionally considered separate letters of the alphabet in more archaic examples, which have been published as recently as the 1950s; however, modern alphabets and teachings discourage this due to an ongoing effort to set decisive rules for Latvian and eliminate barbaric words accumulated during the Soviet occupation. The digraph "ie" is never considered a separate letter. ''Ō'', ''Ŗ'', and the digraphs ''CH'' (only used in loanwords) and ''UO'' are no longer part of the alphabet, but are still used in certain dialects and newspapers that use the old orthography. ''Y'' is used only in certain dialects and not in the standard language. ''F'' and ''H'' are only used in loanwords.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ A nearby language, Pite Sami, uses Lule Sami orthography but also includes the letters and , which are not in Lule Sami.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Lithuanian also has the digraphs: . However, these are not considered separate letters of the alphabet. ''F'', ''H'', and the digraph ''CH'' are only used in loanwords. Demanding publications such as dictionaries, maps, schoolbooks etc. need additional diacritical marks to differentiate homographs. Using grave accent on A, E, I, O, U, acute accent on all vowels, and tilde accent on all vowels and on L, M, N and R. Small E and I (also with ogonek) must retain the dot when additional accent mark is added to the character; the use of ì and í (with missing dot) is considered unacceptable.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ In Livonian, the letters ''Ö, Ȫ, Y, Ȳ'' were used by the older generation, but the younger generation merged these sounds; Around the late 1990s, these letters were removed from the alphabet.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Maltese also has the digraphs: .
# ↑ Māori only uses in digraph. is also a digraph.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Marshallese often uses the old orthography (because people did not approve of the new orthography), which writes ''ļ'' as l, ''m̧'' as m, ''ņ'' as n, ''p'' as b, ''o̧'' as o at the ends of words or in the word ''yokwe'' (also spelled iakwe under the old orthography; under the new orthography, spelled io̧kwe), but a at other places, and ''d'' as dr before vowels, or r after vowels. The old orthography writes ''ā'' as e in some words, but ā in others; it also writes ''ū'' as i between consonants. The old orthography writes geminates and long vowels as two letters instead. Allophones of , written as only e o ō in the new orthography, are also written as i u and very rarely, ū. The letter ''Y'' only occurs in the words ''yokwe'' or the phrase ''yokwe yuk'' (also spelled iakwe iuk in the old orthography or io̧kwe eok in the new orthography).
# ↑ ↑ ↑ Massachusett also uses the digraphs and the letter (which was previously written ). is only used in the digraph .
# ↑ Some Mohawk speakers use orthographic in place of the consonant . The glottal stop is indicated with an apostrophe and long vowels are written with a colon .
# ↑ Na'vi uses the letter ''ʼ'' and the digraphs ''aw'', ''ay'', ''ew'', ''ey'', ''kx'', ''ll'', ''ng'' (sometimes written ), ''px'', ''rr'', ''ts'' (sometimes written ), ''tx''. (in standard orthography) and are used only in digraphs.
# ↑ Oromo uses the following digraphs: . is only used in the digraph and loanwords. and are only used in loanwords.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Papiamento also has the digraphs: . are only used in loanwords and proper names. is only used in digraphs, loanwords, and proper names. Papiamentu in Bonaire and Curaçao is different from Papiamento in Aruba in the following ways: Papiamento in Aruba uses a more etymological spelling, so Papiamento uses in native words outside of the digraph , but Papiamentu in Bonaire and Curaçao does not. Papiamentu in Bonaire and Curaçao uses , , , and for various sounds and for stress, but Papiamento in Aruba does not use these letters.
# ↑ Piedmontese also uses the letter , which usually precedes a vowel, as in "moon".
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Pinyin has four tone markers that can go on top of any of the six vowels (); e.g.: macron (), acute accent (), caron (), grave accent (). It also uses the digraphs: .
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Polish also has the digraphs: . occur only in loanwords, and are sometimes not considered as part of the alphabet.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Portuguese uses the digraphs . The trema on was used in Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese (; ; also known as pt-BR) is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of Portuguese language native to Brazil. It is spoken by almost all of the 203 million inhabitants of Brazil and widely across the Brazilian diaspora ...
from 1943 to 2009. European Portuguese in that case used the grave accent () from 1911 to 1920, then abolished. The grave accent was used on , until 1973. are used in geographical names outside Europe and not part of the language proper. The now abandoned practice was to indicate underlying stress in words with suffixes that begin with or in words ending in , e.g. , , , etc. The trema on could be used to mark not stressed hiatuses, e.g. , although this use was only optional and applied to too. Neither the digraphs nor accented letters are considered part of the alphabet. occur only in loanwords, and were not letters of the alphabet from 1911 (Portugal) or 1943 (Brazil) until 2009, but these letters were in fact used before 1911 in Portugal and before 1943 in Brazil when the word's etymology allowed, e.g. , , etc. (although was formally not included in the alphabet).
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Romani has the digraphs: .
# ↑ Romanian normally uses the letters ( with a comma diacritic below) but they are frequently replaced by ( with a cedilla
A cedilla ( ; from Spanish language, Spanish ', "small ''ceda''", i.e. small "z"), or cedille (from French , ), is a hook or tail () added under certain letters (as a diacritic, diacritical mark) to indicate that their pronunciation is modif ...
) due to past lack of standardization. occur only in loanwords.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ Slovak also has the digraphs which are considered separate letters. While are considered separate letters, in collation they are treated merely as letters with diacritics. However, , as well as the digraphs, are actually sorted as separate letters. occur only in loanwords.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Sorbian also uses the digraphs: , . is only used in Upper Sorbian, and , , and (outside the digraph ) are only used in Lower Sorbian.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ Spanish uses several digraphs to represent single sounds: , (preceding or ), , , ; of these, the digraphs and were traditionally considered individual letters with their own name (, ) and place in the alphabet (after and , respectively), but in order to facilitate international compatibility the Royal Spanish Academy
The Royal Spanish Academy (, ; ) is Spain's official royal institution with a mission to ensure the stability of the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, and is affiliated with national language academies in 22 other Hispanophon ...
decided to cease this practice in 1994 and all digraphs are now collated as combinations of two separate characters. While cedilla is etymologically Spanish diminutive of ceda () and Sancho Pança is the original form in Cervantes books, C with cedilla is now completely displaced by in contemporary language. In poetry, the diaeresis may be used to break a diphthong into separate vowels. Regarding that usage, Ortografía de la lengua española states that "diaeresis is usually placed over the closed vowel .e. or and, when both are closed, generally over the first". In this context, the use of is rare, but part of the normative orthography.
# ↑ Swedish uses in well integrated loan words like and , although is considered a modified , while , , are letters. and are rarely used words. and are used in some integrated words like webb and zon. , , , and are used for names only, but exist in Swedish names. For foreign names , , and more are sometimes used, but usually not. Swedish has many digraphs and some trigraphs. and others are usually pronounced as one sound.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Tswana also has the digraphs: . The letters , , and only appear in onomatopoeic and loanwords. The letters and only appear in loanwords.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Turkmen had a slightly different alphabet in 1993–1995 (which used some rare letters) was written as (capital ), as , as (capital ), and as (capital ) (so that all characters were available in Code page 437
Code page 437 ( CCSID 437) is the character set of the original IBM PC (personal computer). It is also known as CP437, OEM-US, OEM 437, PC-8, or MS-DOS Latin US. The set includes all printable ASCII characters as well as some accented letters (di ...
). In the new alphabet, all characters are available in ISO/IEC 8859-2.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ Ulithian also has the digraphs: . is used only in digraphs.
# ↑ Uzbek also has the digraphs: considered as letters. is used only in digraphs. , and apostrophe are considered as letters. These letters have preferred typographical variants: , , and respectively.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Venda also has the digraphs and trigraphs: . are used in foreign words.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Vietnamese has seven additional base letters: . It uses five tone markers that can go on top (or below) any of the 12 vowels (); e.g.: grave accent (), hook above (), tilde (), acute accent (), and dot below (). It also uses several digraphs and trigraphs but they are no longer considered letters.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Walloon has the digraphs and trigraphs: . The letter outside the digraph is in some orthographies, but not the default two. The letter is in some orthographies, but not in the default two. Also in some orthographies are , , , and even and (which are not available as a precomposed character in Unicode, so and are used as substitutes)
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Welsh has the digraphs , , , , , , , . Each of these digraphs is collated as a separate letter, and comes immediately after in the alphabet. It also frequently uses circumflex
The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from "bent around"a translation of ...
es, and occasionally uses diaereses, acute accent
The acute accent (), ,
is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...
s and grave accent
The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and many other Western European languages as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other ...
s, on its seven vowels (), but accented characters are not regarded as separate letters of the alphabet.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Xhosa has a large number of digraphs, trigraphs, and even one tetragraph are used to represent various phonemes: . It also occasionally uses acute accent
The acute accent (), ,
is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...
s, grave accent
The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and many other Western European languages as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other ...
s, circumflex
The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from "bent around"a translation of ...
es, and diaereses on its five vowels (), but accented characters are not regarded as separate letters of the alphabet.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ Yapese has the digraphs and trigraphs: . , representing the glottal stop, is not always used. Often an apostrophe is used to represent the glottal stop instead. is used only in digraphs. is used only in digraphs and loanwords. is used only in loanwords.
# ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ Yoruba uses the digraph . Also, vowels take a grave accent, an acute accent, or no accent, depending on tone. Although the "dot below" diacritic is widely used, purists prefer a short vertical underbar (Unicode COMBINING VERTICAL LINE BELOW U+0329) - this resembles the IPA notation for a syllabic consonant, attached to the base of the letter (, or ). The seven Yoruba vowels (, , , , , , ) can be uttered in three different tones: high (acute accent); middle (no accent) and low (grave accent). The letters and , when written without diacritics, indicate nasalisation of the preceding vowel. and also occur as syllabics - in these circumstances, they take acute or grave tonal diacritics, like the vowels. Middle tone is marked with a macron to differentiate it from the unmarked nasalising consonants. A tilde was used in older orthography (still occasionally used) to indicate a double vowel. This is tonally ambiguous, and has now been replaced by showing the paired vowels, each marked with the appropriate tones. However, where a double vowel has the tonal sequence high-low or low-high, it may optionally be replaced by a single vowel with a circumflex (high-low) or caron (low-high), e.g. á + à = ; à + á = .
# ↑ ↑ Zuni contains the glottal stop and the digraph: ; is only used in that digraph. The other digraphs , , and are not part of the alphabet.
Miscellaneous
* Africa Alphabet *African reference alphabet
The African Reference Alphabet is a largely defunct continent-wide guideline for the creation of Latin alphabets for African languages. Two variants of the initial proposal (one in English and a second in French) were made at a 1978 UNESCO-organi ...
* Beghilos
*Gaj's Latin alphabet
Gaj's Latin alphabet ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, Gajeva latinica, separator=" / ", Гајева латиница}, ), also known as ( sr-Cyrl, абецеда, ) or ( sr-Cyrl, гајица, link=no, ), is the form of the Latin script used for writing all ...
, is the only script of both the Croatian and Bosniak
The Bosniaks (, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic: Бошњаци, ; , ) are a South Slavs, South Slavic ethnic group native to the Southeast European historical region of Bosnia (region), Bosnia, today part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and who sha ...
standard language
A standard language (or standard variety, standard dialect, standardized dialect or simply standard) is any language variety that has undergone substantial codification in its grammar, lexicon, writing system, or other features and that stands ...
s in current use, and one of the two scripts of both the Serbian and Montenegrin standard languages alongside the Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Easte ...
.
* Initial Teaching Alphabet
*International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
* Łatynka for Ukrainian
*Leet
Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, or simply hacker speech, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via refle ...
(1337 alphabet)
* Romani alphabet for most Romani languages
* Sámi Latin alphabet
* Standard Alphabet by Lepsius
*Tatar alphabet
Three scripts are currently used for the Tatar language: Cyrillic (in Russia, including the Republic of Tatarstan, where it is an official language and where the majority of speakers live, and in Kazakhstan), Latin (in Turkey, Finland, the Czech R ...
, similar to Turkish alphabet and Jaꞑalif as a part of Uniform Turkic alphabet
*Uralic Phonetic Alphabet
Finno-Ugric transcription (FUT) or the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nesto ...
See also
*Diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
*Latin-script alphabet
A Latin-script alphabet (Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet) is an alphabet that uses Letter (alphabet), letters of the Latin script. The 21-letter archaic Latin alphabet and the 23-letter classical Latin alphabet belong to the oldest of this gr ...
* Latin-script multigraph
* Latin script in Unicode
*Ligature Ligature may refer to:
Language
* Ligature (writing), a combination of two or more letters into a single symbol (typography and calligraphy)
* Ligature (grammar), a morpheme that links two words
Medicine
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture us ...
* List of Latin-script letters
* List of precomposed Latin characters in Unicode
*Romanization
In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and tra ...
*Writing systems of Africa
The writing systems of Africa are the current and historical writing systems used on the Africa, African continent, both those which are indigenous and those which were introduced. In many African societies, History of Africa, history was traditio ...
;Categories
*
*
*
Footnotes
External links
*Michael Everson
Michael Everson (born January 1963) is an American and Irish linguistics, linguist, Character encoding, script encoder, typesetting, typesetter, type designer and Publishing, publisher. He runs a publishing company called Evertype, through which ...
'Alphabets of Europe
{{DEFAULTSORT:Latin alphabets Collation Writing-related lists Letters with diacritics