Wolfram Mathematica

Writing Scripts and Alphabets

The Alphabet function returns the list of characters in a given language, alphabet, or writing script.

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Alphabet[Entity["Alphabet", "English::ff9sd"]]

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Alphabet[Entity["Alphabet", "SerbianCyrillic::933zb"]]

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Alphabet[Entity["Alphabet", "Hindi::7cxj8"]]

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The alphabet of a writing script refers in general to the most common base letters used by alphabets of that writing script.

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Alphabet[Entity["WritingScript", "Latin::6tr5q"]]

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Alphabet[Entity["WritingScript", "Arabic::3y92v"]]

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Alphabet[Entity["WritingScript", "Devanagari::t85j5"]]

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The alphabet of a language is usually the same as the main alphabet used in this language.

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Alphabet[Entity["Language", "Georgian"]]

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If a language uses more than one alphabet, applying Alphabet will return the most common alphabet used by that language.

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Alphabet[Entity["Language", "Serbian"]]

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It is common that an alphabet does not use all the characters from its writing script.

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Entity["Language", "Russian"]["WritingScripts"]

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Alphabet[Entity["WritingScript", "Cyrillic::73gxm"]]

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Alphabet[Entity["Language", "Russian"]]

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Russian and Cyrillic (Russian's writing script) contain different sets of letters.

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Complement[Alphabet[Entity["WritingScript", "Cyrillic::73gxm"]], Alphabet[Entity["Language", "Russian"]]]

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The Latin language and the Latin alphabet must not be confused with the Latin writing script.

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Alphabet[Entity["Language", "Latin"]]

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The classical Latin alphabet does not include a few (now common) writing script letters.

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Complement[Alphabet[Entity["WritingScript", "Latin::6tr5q"]], Alphabet[Entity["Alphabet", "Latin::x7687"]]]

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And in this case, if the input is the simple "Latin" string, it will assume the writing script.

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Alphabet["Latin"]

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Also, many alphabets include diacritics, ligatures, and double characters as part of their basic set of letters.

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Alphabet[Entity["Alphabet", "Slovak::kj62d"]]

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You can build a table with the difference between the set of letters for some alphabets and their writing scripts.

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TextGrid[With[{alph = {Entity["Alphabet", "Bodo::qr2jm"], Entity["Alphabet", "Esperanto::8q9rq"], Entity["Alphabet", "Faroese::4w3x2"], Entity["Alphabet", "Gikuyu::m35j4"], Entity["Alphabet", "Konkani::qxvq5"], Entity["Alphabet", "Icelandic::89f83"], Entity["Alphabet", "Latin::x7687"], Entity["Alphabet", "Osetin::bd2zw"], Entity["Alphabet", "Russian::9qdvh"], Entity["Alphabet", "Slovak::kj62d"], Entity["Alphabet", "Spanish::stxh4"], Entity["Alphabet", "UzbekArab::6zds4"]}}, Prepend[With[{ws = First[#[EntityProperty["Alphabet", "WritingScripts"]]]}, {#, ws, Row[Complement[Alphabet[#], Alphabet[ws]], ","], Row[Complement[Alphabet[ws], Alphabet[#]], ","]}] & /@ alph, {Style["Alphabet", Bold], Style["Writing script", Bold], Style["Extra letters to its writing script", Bold], Style["Writing script letters missing in the alphabet", Bold]}]], Frame -> All]

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