Medieval
40 scripts
Cyrillic
Created by disciples of Saints Cyril and Methodius. Used by over 250 million people across...
Korean Hangul
Invented by King Sejong the Great and a team of scholars. Only takes days to learn, compar...
Thai Script
Created by King Ramkhamhaeng. Has 44 consonants, 15 vowel symbols, and 4 tone marks. Writt...
Bengali Script
Used by over 230 million people for Bengali and Assamese. Evolved from the Siddham script....
Tibetan Script
Created by Thonmi Sambhota under King Songtsen Gampo. Based on the Devanagari script with ...
Burmese Script
Derived from the Mon script which came from Brahmi. Has 33 consonants and 12 vowels. The c...
Mongolian Script
Written vertically in columns from left to right. Derived from the Uyghur script which cam...
Khmer Script
The oldest currently used script in Southeast Asia. Has 33 consonants and 24 vowels. The a...
Lao Script
Derived from the Khmer script. Has 27 consonants and 28 vowels. Very similar to Thai but w...
Malayalam Script
Used for Malayalam with 38 million speakers. Has 15 vowels and 36 consonants. Evolved from...
Odia Script
Used for Odia with 37 million speakers. Has a distinctive rounded shape that resembles a d...
Urdu Script
Essentially the Persian variant of the Arabic script. Written right to left. Has 38 letter...
Persian Script
A modified version of Arabic script with 4 additional letters for Persian sounds. Written ...
Yi Script
Used by the Yi people of southwest China. Originally a logographic system with over 8,000 ...
Glagolitic
The oldest known Slavic alphabet, created by Saints Cyril and Methodius. Has 41 letters. R...
Rongorongo
A system of glyphs carved on wooden objects. Discovered by Europeans in 1864. Has not been...
Nastaliq Calligraphy
The predominant calligraphic style for Urdu and Persian. Words hang below an imaginary bas...
Siddham
A late Brahmic script prized as the vehicle of Buddhist tantra. Pilgrims carried it to Chi...
Grantha
A medieval Brahmic script created mainly for writing Sanskrit in Tamil country. Preserved ...
Telugu Script
One of the major Dravidian scripts, developed from the Kadamba and Chalukya variants of Br...
Kannada Script
The classical script of Karnataka, sibling of Telugu within the southern Brahmic family. N...
Meitei Mayek
The ancient script of Manipur in northeastern India. Replaced by Bengali letters for centu...
Kawi Script
The first Indic script of the Indonesian archipelago, carried by trade from India. Wrote O...
Balinese Script
A descendant of Kawi still taught in Bali for religious and ceremonial texts. About 47 let...
Javanese Script
The royal script of the Javanese courts of Surakarta and Yogyakarta. Evolved from Kawi bet...
Baybayin
The pre-colonial writing of the Philippines, recorded by Spanish chroniclers in the 1600s....
Ranjana
An ornate Brahmic script developed in Nepal for Buddhist manuscripts. Alternating thick an...
Khitan Scripts
The writing of the Khitan people who ruled the Liao dynasty. Two systems existed: a large ...
Tangut Script
Invented by imperial command for the Tangut or Western Xia dynasty. Nearly 6,000 character...
Nom Script
The Vietnamese adaptation of Chinese characters for writing native words. Up to 20,000 cha...
Dongba Script
The pictographic writing of the Naxi people of Yunnan. About 1,400 picture signs depicting...
Phags-pa Script
A square script created by the Tibetan lama Phags-pa for Kublai Khan. Designed to write ev...
Orkhon Script
The writing of the Gokturk khaganates, named for inscriptions in the Orkhon valley. Also c...
Old Hungarian Script
Also called rovasiras or Hungarian runes. Carved into sticks and stone before the Latin al...
Quipu
Knotted cords used by the Inca empire for accounting and records. Colors, knot types, and ...
Kufic
The oldest calligraphic form of the Arabic script, named for the city of Kufa. Angular and...
Naskh
A compact cursive hand that became the standard for books and everyday Arabic writing. Leg...
Thuluth
A monumental style whose name means one third, possibly from the proportions of its letter...
Hiragana
The flowing cursive syllabary of Japanese, developed from cursive forms of Chinese charact...
Katakana
The angular syllabary of Japanese, developed by monks as shorthand pronunciation marks bes...