From Latin and Chinese to Tamil and Telugu, discover the top ten most popular writing scripts used around the world
By
Around the world, there are more than 293 known writing systems. Of these, around 156 are currently in use, as languages become extinct and the resulting writing systems lost.
Writing systems vary wildly – for example, Latin reads left to right, while Arabic is right to left. Visual differences also are notable: Russian characters look different to Chinese, which has a distinguishable difference to Korean, for example.
Enjoying this article? Check out our related reads…
Writing systems – otherwise known as scripts – can be categorised into six main sections. For example, there are alphabets, where symbols represent consonants and vowels, as well as featural scripts – symbols that represent aspects that are neither consonants or vowels. Adjabs are where symbols represent just consonants, and vowels are determined by context, while logographies – like Chinese (Han) – work by each symbol holding a meaning. Abugidas, such as Bengali, function with each symbol representing a syllable, whereas syllabaries work the same, but similar syllables look visually different.
But what are the most popular writing systems across the globe? And where are they spoken?
10) Tamil
Tamil is an abugida script, used by around 78.6 million individuals across India, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia. It is considered one of the world’s oldest living languages, with records dating back to the third century B.C.
The language is worshipped, with the Tamil Thāi Temple in Karaikudi, India dedicated to it. As well as this, there is a Tamil festival held on 14 January in India to commemorate the language.
Tamil has 12 vowels, more than double the number in English. In total, the abugida script contains 247 letters – far more than the 26 in the Roman alphabet.
9) Hangul
Hangul is an alphabet used in North and South Korea, as well as a small group in Indonesia. Collectively, more than 80 million individuals use it. It is made up of 14 consonants and 10 vowels, making it an alphabet with a total of 24 letters.
The development of the Hangul alphabet is attributed to Sejong, the fourth king of the Chosŏn (Yi) dynasty. In 1446, the system was officially made the writing script of the Korean language by one of Sejong’s decrees.
8) Telugu
An abugida script, Telugu is used by around 83 million people in southern India, mainly in the states of Pradesh and Telangana. Other Indian states with large numbers of Telugu speakers include Karnataka (3.7 million), Tamil Nadu (3.5 million), Maharashtra (1.3 million), Chhattisgarh (1.1 million) and Odisha (214,010).
Other countries with major numbers of Telugu speakers include the UAE (455,000), Saudi Arabia (349,000), the USA (248,000), Sri Lanka (230,000) and Malaysia (119,000).
7) Kana (Hiragana & Katakana)
Kana is a syllabary script, used by 123 million people in Japan. The term ‘kana’ refers to the two Japanese syllabaries – hiragana and katakana. Each system represents the same 46 basic sounds in the Japanese language, but they have different uses and visual styles.
Hiragana is used for native Japanese words, verb and adjective endings and grammatical particles. Conversely, Katakana is used for foreign words, names, onomatopoeia, emphasis (such as italics in English), scientific terms and company names.
6) Bengali
Used by around 300 million people across Bangladesh and eastern India, Bengali is an abugida script. It is derived from Brahmi, one of the two ancient Indian scripts, and alterations to the language continued until the 19th century.
Bengali is written left-to-right and has no capital letters. Punctuation marks – apart from one – are all taken from 19th-century English.
5) Cyrillic
Predominantly used in Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia, Cyrillic is the chosen alphabet for more than 350 million individuals. It was developed in the 9th and 10th centuries for the Slavic-speaking Eastern Orthodox faith.
It is currently used exclusively, or as one of several alphabets, for more than 50 languages including Kazakh, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Russian, Serbian and Ukrainian.
The modern Cyrillic alphabets – Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Serbian—have been modified distinctly from their originals. Modern Russian has 32 letters, Bulgarian 30, Serbian 30, and Ukrainian 32.
4) Devanagari
Devanagari is a script used in India, Nepal, and Fiji by more than 480 million people. It is used to write the Sanskrit, Prakrit, Hindi, Marathi, Konkani and Nepali languages, and is derived from the ancient Brahmi script.
Its name is derived from the Sanskrit words ‘deva’, meaning deity or divine, and ‘nagari’, translating to city.
3) Arabic
Arabic is an abjad/abugida script, used by around 828 million people in the Middle East, North Africa, Iran, Pakistan and parts of Central and South Asia.
It is the official language for 22 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Egypt. Arabic speakers use a variety of dialects – there are around 30 in total.
In total, Arabic contains just three vowels compared to 28 consonant letters. Each of these three vowels has five variations, appearing only as symbols written either downward or upwards and surrounded by consonant letters.
There are at least 11 words in total meaning ‘love’, and hundreds for ‘camel‘. For example, ‘Al-Jafool’ means a camel frightened by anything; ‘Al-Harib’ describes a female camel walking ahead of the others by such a distance that it appears to be fleeing.
2) Chinese (Han)
Chinese (Han) is the world’s second-most popular script, with more than 1.5 billion individuals using it in China, Japan, Korea and Singapore.
The traditional Han script developed from a script originating in the fifth century AD. It was used since that time throughout the Chinese-speaking world until the Communist government of China replaced it with a simplified version in 1949. This script is now the official one used in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Singapore. However, the traditional characters are still used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as for aesthetic purposes in the PRC and Singapore.
1) Latin
At number one is Latin, the world’s most used script – in total, more than 4.9 billion individuals use it worldwide. It is used for most European, American, Asian and African languages.
Latin developed from the Etruscan alphabet before 600 BCE, and can be traced through scripts including Greek and Phoenician to the North Semitic alphabet used in Syria and Palestine in 1100 BCE.
The earliest inscription in the Latin language appears on a cloak pin dating from around the 7th century BCE, while other inscriptions appear not much later on a small pillar and a vase.
