Abugida
34 scripts
Devanagari
Used for Hindi, Sanskrit, Nepali, Marathi, and over 120 other languages. The distinctive h...
Thai Script
Created by King Ramkhamhaeng. Has 44 consonants, 15 vowel symbols, and 4 tone marks. Writt...
Tamil Script
One of the oldest surviving classical writing systems. Used for Tamil with 78 million spea...
Bengali Script
Used by over 230 million people for Bengali and Assamese. Evolved from the Siddham script....
Ethiopic Script
Used for Amharic, Tigrinya, Geez, and other Ethiopian languages. Over 500 base characters ...
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...
Sinhala Script
One of the Brahmic scripts with a distinctive rounded appearance. Has 18 vowels and 42 con...
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...
Gujarati Script
Used for Gujarati with 60 million speakers. Very similar to Devanagari but without the hor...
Gurmukhi Script
Developed by the Sikh gurus for writing Punjabi. Has 35 original letters plus extensions. ...
Odia Script
Used for Odia with 37 million speakers. Has a distinctive rounded shape that resembles a d...
Inuktitut Syllabics
Adapted from the Cree syllabics by James Evans. Used for Inuktitut and other Inuit languag...
Cree Syllabics
Developed by James Evans, a Methodist missionary. Each symbol represents a consonant-vowel...
Bamum Script
Invented by King Njoya of the Bamum people. Evolved from a pictographic system through mul...
Sanskrit Devanagari detail
See Devanagari main entry. Sanskrit texts are predominantly written in Devanagari....
Kharoshthi
An ancient script of Gandhara in modern Pakistan and Afghanistan. Derived from Aramaic und...
Brahmi
The ancestor of nearly every script of South and Southeast Asia, from Devanagari to Thai a...
Gupta Script
The refined descendant of Brahmi used across the Gupta empire, a golden age of Sanskrit li...
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...
Phags-pa Script
A square script created by the Tibetan lama Phags-pa for Kublai Khan. Designed to write ev...
Pahawh Hmong
A script for the Hmong language created by Shong Lue Yang, revered as the Mother of Writin...
Pollard Script
Devised by missionary Samuel Pollard for the A-Hmao or Big Flowery Miao language of Yunnan...