Talk:List of writing systems

message: The vast majority of hieroglyphs are logographic. There are thousands of glyphs (5000 by some counts, some limited to a single temple), but only a few hundred phonetic elements - and many of these were logograms used for their phonetic values, rather than dedicated phonetic glyphs. Of course, you'll see the same phonograms used over and over, but that's because there were relatively few to choose from. Egyptian was written with three main elements: logograms, ideograms ("determiners"), and phonograms. Of the three, the logogram was the most important, and the others optional to varying degrees. Egyptian was not written phonetically except for loan words and foreign names, which had no logograms (rather like Chinese today, or katakana). kwami 02:00, 2005 July 16 (UTC)
:Um, no. No and no. Determinatives are not logographs. -- Evertype·✆ 22:51, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Egyptian hieroglyphs 

message: So in Georgia we use "Georgian and Cyrillic" scripts, and in Armenia they use "Armenian and Latin"
That is a bullshit. Thats why people dont trust wikipedia. Keep up like this.
--GeoRugby (talk) 09:30, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scripts used in Georgia 

message: The Abugida list here, that one in Abugida, and :Category:Abugida writing systems will
tend to be different. Is there a Bot taking care of such issues? Should the category system hold
the only list? I tend to prefer the category solution. Pjacobi 21:17, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: We know Meroitic is an abugida. We just don't know Meroitic very well. We know the Etruscan alphabet perfectly well too. But we don't know the Etruscan language. -- Evertype·✆ 00:43, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redundancies, Inconsistencies - how to resolve? 

message: I've included brief descriptions in each section because most people won't know what all these things are and it's ridiculous to make the reader check 5 other pages just to understand this one. - dcljr (talk) 01:38, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Descriptions 

message: I've made the list for Cyrillic longer and more descriptive. Would you mind removing the list of individual Slavic languages to make it shorter? Suggested change:
: a number of Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian language, etc.) and...
to
: a number of Slavic languages and...
--Imz 17:16, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The list for Cyrillic 

message: If one would like the colour nmaes included in the legend, feel free to replace by the version below. I personally don't thnik they are necessary. --Donar Reiskoffer 11:31, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: By the way, why Korean is called syllabary? It is clearly alphabet.--Dojarca (talk) 18:31, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  map with colours named 

message: Hebrew alphabet called aleph-bet an Hebrew, why it is designated with the Arabic word "abjad" in the image?--Dojarca (talk) 15:42, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Because the Arabic term is used in English. Hebrew is functionally equivalent to Arabic. kwami (talk) 18:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abjad 

message: I'm asking is there any functional difference between north and south Indic except the fact that North Indic is squarer and Devanagari written with a line strike through.  | ខែមារាតសប្បាយ | Talk 21:35, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Is there really any functional differences?

message: I don't think this article exists, but if anyone has the sources to get it started, I'd be happy to work on it. 74.78.116.93 (talk) 02:06, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: List of scripts by number of users

message: Really italic alphabets were a lot, since before Roman conquest in Italy lived many peoples: Ligurians, Rhetians, Venetians, Celtic, Etruscans, Picenians, Umbrians, Samnites, Oscans, Faliscans, Daunians, Japigians, Messapians, Brutii, Sicanians, Siculi and so on, and every people had its own alphabet. They similar, but not identical.The same way each Greek city had its own alphabet. The standardized Greek alphabet is the Athenian alphabet adopted in Hellenistic age. And Athenian alphabet was borrowed by Miletus, increased with the two "spirits" from Taranto. Lele giannoni (talk) 20:44, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Greek and Italic alphabets

message: A section of Further (notable) books on the subject is required to assist users. --Inayity (talk) 10:37, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Further Reading Section needed 

message: In the table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writing_systems#Less_than_20_million_users there appears to be a copy-paste-error under Khmer. Also, Tibetan could be added. In both cases, I do not know enough to make correct entries, so I am posting it here.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.40.58.207 (talk) 12:21, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table of rare writing systems 

message: I noticed that WritingSystemsoftheWorld4.png has been updated/corrected to WritingSystemsoftheWorld6.png. So I was going to change that, until I noticed that v4 has 11 different versions (language etc.) of it (scroll down to "Other versions" at previous link). The information that those are available is likely to disappear, so I have left the current (but incorrect) v4 in place. If you have any good ideas, then proceed, but in any case, there is some "documentation" in this post. -- Katana (talk) 18:32, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  WritingSystemsoftheWorld4.png updated to v6 

message: Georgia does not have a Cyrillic-based language as an official. That is true, but so do the almost unrecognized breakaway republics, which are in fact independent (South Ossetia and Abkhazia). Also, note the color Moldova uses: Moldova's only official language is Romanian, but breakaway unrecognized, but independent and existent Transnistria has Cyrillic languages. 
It would probably be fair to have two pictures: one on official languages and one on really used (Serbian is officially Cyrillic, but in fact also uses Latin). But for now, why is then Kosovo shown independent? It is not a UN member either and a UN member claims that territory.--R8R (talk) 10:10, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cyrillic and Georgia 

message: Currently the names of the scripts are only given in their native script in the List of scripts by adoption section. It would be informative to give the same information for other scripts. It wouldn't look very good to do this for only a few examples. We could do it comprehensively throughout the article, I suppose. I'm not sure what the best approach is. Does anyone have any thoughts as to where the best place for this to be might be? Waitak (talk) 14:40, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples 

message: this article lists that Arabic script is used by 380 million but it's wrong. Arabic script is used solely in Arab countries, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan. Some countries have also languages which uses Arabic script like India, China and Malaysia. If we count only those countries population where Arabic script is solely used then it will  exceed this wrong 380 million. remember all lancuages in these countries written in Arabic script Arab countries (356 Million)+Pakistan(196 Million)+Iran(78 Million)+Afghanistan(31 Million)
it becomes 661 Million. and so far we are not including those languages in India, China and Malaysia written in Arabic script. Please correct that list.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.167.103.128 (talk) 19:36, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arabic script usage by population  

message: The table at List of writing systems#List of writing systems by adoption lists "Inuktitut"; this is sort of like listing Cyrillic but calling it "Russian" and ignoring the fact that it is used for other languages, too. The writing system in question was originally developed for Ojibwe, though it is rarely used for that now, but it remains in vigorous use in Cree (and is used in portions of the Cree Wikipedia), particularly Plains Cree, and this is not Inuktitut, nor is it entirely "north of the tree line". It has also been used for other Algonquian and Athabascan languages of Canada, though whether any of them currently use it I'm not sure. --Haruo (talk) 16:02, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: This correction should also add to the population figure, though not enough to affect the order of the list. --Haruo (talk) 16:04, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Corrected, though it is missing the Anishinaabemowin name for syllabics. Also, the names used for the script are simplified: I am certain various Dene languages call them differently as do the various Cree Nations. I also made sure to note the territories/countries where syllabics are used within the Canadian State. Danachos (talk) 19:30, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inuktitut > Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics 

message: As far as I learned, plain Yiddish script is NOT an abjad, but a true alphabet: all vowel sounds are represented by full letters and occational diacritics may not be omitted. This said, it certainly has numerous Hebrew loanwords, which usually (but not always) adjust to Hebrew orthography. Since I am not a speaker of Yiddish, I dare not change the article page, but it should probably be revised. --Heinrich Puschmann (talk) 13:44, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Well yes, but you should be very careful with your terminology. I usually follow Unicode practice: The Yiddish writing system uses the Hebrew script as an alphabet, except in the case of Hebrew (and to a lesser degree Aramaic) loanwords which retain their original orthography of the Holy Scriptures where the Hebrew script is used as an abjad. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 08:03, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yiddish script is NOT an abjad 

message: I realized the old map had light green for Arabic/Latin and Medium green for Hebrew. However, the new map lacks the light green colour, so a small corner of southern Sudan and Brunei (Arabic and Jawi/Malay, respectively) is incorrectly listed as "Hebrew". Can someone correct this? 23.233.82.54 (talk) 01:20, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed, so too does the Canadian part. It shows only Nunavut, where syllabics are employed in Denendeh as well as Nunavik and much of northern Quebec, much of Ontario (definitely Nishnawbe Aski) and most of the Prairies. Even if it only political designations, Northwest Territories should at minimum also be included. Danachos (talk) 19:40, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map needs to be updated 

message: Hey, I was just looking at this page and I realized to myself that Pinyin users should probably be included under Latin script users.  I'm a newbie on wikipedia, so I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm pretty sure something like the edits I made needs to be done. Everyone I meet that uses Chinese uses the Latin alpahbet to type out the sounds of Chinese. There is only a very small minority of people that have the ability to avoid the Latin alphabet, and they are experts that could use pinyin if they wanted to. Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:41, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: On a related note, the second map lists "Zhuyin" (Zhuyin Fuhao, the Mandarin Phonetic Alphabet or "bo po mo fo") as the writing system associated with Taiwan. This is misleading. Taiwanese normally write with traditional Chinese characters (as opposed to the simplified ones used in the PRC). Zhuyun Fuhao is studied by Taiwan schoolchildren learning to read, much as Hanyu Pinyin is in the PRC. Both groups gradually transition to characters (which are harder). In the PRC, it may be that some people are literate only in Hanyu Pinyin (which was in fact originally intended to replace characters, a plan which Mao deemed unfeasible). Outside of young schoolchildren, I don't think there could be anybody in Taiwan who only reads Zhuyin Fuhao. At any rate, we need to decide whether auxiliary scripts ought to be represented in the maps. (Cf. Mongolia, which has two official scripts.) --Dawud  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.164.172.214 (talk) 00:53, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pinyin users 

message: The heading and intro of this section has been changed. Has anyone bothered to check afterwards whether it was still appropriate for the languages listed there? I'm asking because Khitan small script definitively is a script, it has even been partially deciphered, and no longer belongs in this section, but I don't know enough about the others to tell.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.61.180.106 (talk) 12:53, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Undeciphered systems that may be writing 

message: I haven't seen Adlam on your map of world writing systems. 
Could you please edit and add it up? 102.143.9.164 (talk) 16:12, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adlam Alphabet 𞤢𞤤𞤳𞤵𞤤𞤫 𞤀𞤣𞤤𞤢𞤥 

message: Okay so, I find this article super confusing and awkward to navigate. I might not be as experienced as others here, but I think I would be better to reformat this list into something more easily readable.  Ashertheaxolotl (talk) 19:09, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Perhaps we reformat this?