science

List of Latin-script alphabets

List of Latin-script alphabets is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand List of Latin-script alphabets rather than just read about it. In short: The lists and tables below summarize and compare the letter inventories of some of the Latin-script alphabets. In this article, the scope of the word "alphabet" is broadened to include letters with tone marks, and other diacritics used to represent a wide range of orthographic traditions, without regard to whether or how they are sequenced in their alphabet or the table.

Key takeaways

List of Latin-script alphabets belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect List of Latin-script alphabets to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of List of Latin-script alphabets from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The lists and tables below summarize and compare the letter inventories of some of the Latin-script alphabets. In this article, the scope of the word "alphabet" is broadened to include letters with tone marks, and other diacritics 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,[36] Indonesian, and Malay alphabets only use the 26 letters in both cases. Among alphabets for constructed languages the Ido and Interlingua alphabets only use the 26 letters, while Toki Pona 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 (ch)

Alphabets that contain all ISO basic Latin letters Among alphabets for natural languages the Afrikaans,[54] Aromanian, Azerbaijani (some dialects),[53] Basque,[4] Celtic British, Catalan,[6] Cornish, Czech,[8] Danish,[9] Dutch,[10] Emilian-Romagnol, Filipino,[11] Finnish, French,[12], German,[13] Greenlandic, Hmong, Hungarian,[15] Javanese, Karakalpak,[23] Kurdish, Modern Latin, Luxembourgish, Norwegian,[9] Oromo[65], Papiamento[63], Portuguese, Quechua, Rhaeto-Romance, Romanian, Slovak,[24] Spanish,[25] Sundanese, Swedish, Tswana,[52] Venda,[51] Võro, Walloon,[27] Waray, West Frisian, Xhosa, Zhuang, Zulu alphabets include all 26 letters, at least in their largest version. Among alphabets for constructed languages the Interglossa and Occidental alphabets include all 26 letters. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) includes all 26 letters in their lowercase forms, although g is always 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, or tittle, 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 of 104 languages, 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

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with List of Latin-script alphabets

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what List of Latin-script alphabets claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to List of Latin-script alphabets before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about List of Latin-script alphabets ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of List of Latin-script alphabets

In research: List of Latin-script alphabets appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses List of Latin-script alphabets in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: List of Latin-script alphabets is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Collation, Latin alphabets, Letters with diacritics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for List of Latin-script alphabets outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study List of Latin-script alphabets in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what List of Latin-script alphabets means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain List of Latin-script alphabets out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is List of Latin-script alphabets in simple terms?

Why does List of Latin-script alphabets matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study List of Latin-script alphabets?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on List of Latin-script alphabets.