Every writing system, on the table
Letters are not sounds — they are each culture's compression scheme for sound (or, in Chinese, for meaning). Here is each system laid out in full: every sign, its IPA value linked into the shared sound registry, the combinations it loves, and the ones it forbids.
Latin · A B C …
The 26 letters our Latin-script languages share — and the least honest alphabet on this site: the same letter can mean utterly different sounds per language (j = English /d͡ʒ/, French /ʒ/, Spanish /x/, German /j/; c, g, r, u all shift).
Greek · ελληνικό αλφάβητο
24 letters, and you half-know them already from maths and physics — the trap is that MODERN Greek reads differently from the classroom values: β is v (not b), η υ ι all say /i/, δ is th-in-this, γ is a soft gargle.
Cyrillic (Russian) · ру́сская а́збука
33 letters for a language with far more than 33 sounds — because Russian does not spell its palatalisation with extra consonants, it spells it with the VOWEL that follows, or with a soft sign.
Georgian (Mkhedruli) · ქართული ანბანი
33 letters, 33 sounds, no capitals, nothing silent.
Devanagari (Hindi) · देवनागरी
Not an alphabet but an ABUGIDA: each consonant already contains the vowel /ə/, so क is 'kə', not 'k'.
Arabic · الأبجدية العربية
28 letters, written right to left, always cursive — there is no 'print' vs 'handwriting': letters CONNECT, and each has up to four shapes depending on position (alone, initial, medial, final).
Hangul · 한글
Nineteen consonant letters and twenty-one vowel letters, and the whole system was published with a manual explaining why each letter has the shape it has: the five basic consonants draw the mouth making them, and every other consonant is one of the five with a stroke added for aspiration (ㄱ → ㅋ, ㄷ → ㅌ, ㅂ → ㅍ, ㅈ → ㅊ) or doubled for tenseness (ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ).
Hiragana · ひらがな
46 basic signs, each one a whole syllable — a SYLLABARY, not an alphabet: か is 'ka' and cannot be split into k + a.
Katakana · カタカナ
The same 46 sounds as hiragana, in angular shapes taken from PIECES of Chinese characters (伊 → イ).
Chinese keys (214 radicals) · 部首
Chinese is not written with an alphabet: each character is a picture-built sign, and the 214 keys (radicals, 部首) are the parts it is built FROM.
Characters across languages
The keys, grouped by what they mean · 部首
The 214 keys grouped by what they are about — nature, body, home, animals, tools — with the character, its Mandarin and Cantonese readings, a translation in any language on the site, and an icon, each switchable.
漢字 Kanji & Hanzi — the shared characters
The same characters, read three ways. Japanese kept the Chinese pronunciation it borrowed (音読み) alongside its own native word (訓読み) — so 山 is san, shān saan1 at once. 48 common characters with all three readings, the key each is filed under, and every place Japan, the mainland and Hong Kong write it differently.
Sample
The same first line, five scripts:
| Latin | Learn the language. All of it. At once. |
| Greek | Μάθε τη γλώσσα. Όλη. Μονομιάς. |
| Georgian | ისწავლე ენა. მთლიანად. ერთბაშად. |
| Arabic | تعلّم اللغة. كلّها. دفعة واحدة. |
| Chinese | 学语言。全部。一次学会。 |
| Japanese | 言語を学ぼう。ぜんぶ。いっきに。 |