A guide to all the wonderful and interesting information about writing systems and languages you can find on Omniglot.
Writing systems | News | Articles | My blogs | Book store | Language learning | Useful phrases | Multilingual pages | Gallery | FAQs | Puzzles | Links | Fonts | Downloads | Bibliography | Statistics
Information about over 150 different writing systems. Each page contains an illustration of a writing system; details of its origin, usage, notable features and the language(s) written with it; a sample text, and useful links.
This section is divided as follows:
Alphabets and other writing systems invented by visitors to this site.
Details of many different languages, including their pronunciation, usage, status and sample texts.
Announcements of new pages/sections and significant improvements to existing pages. Also includes occasional links to writing and language-related news on other sites.
Writing systems | Language and language learning | Bilingual Children | Language and culture | Individual languages: Chinese | English | French | Hebrew | Indonesian | Italian | Portuguese | Spanish | Other languages | Translation and interpreting | Multilingual websites and databases | Travel | Food | Spoof articles
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Academic papers / articles
Other articles related to languages and language learing
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My musings on language and languages, interesting words and phrases, details
of my adventures in foreign parts, and various other bit and bobs.
http://www.omniglot.com/blog/
My other blog which I use to practice writing in the languages I'm learning.
At the moment I'm focusing particularly on Manx, Irish and Welsh.
http://www.omniglot.com/rywsut/
Books about writing, language and linguistics, plus language courses, dictionaries, grammars, etc. all gathered together in one place for your convenience and available from: amazon.co.uk, amazon.com, amazon.fr or World Language.
Get an Audiobook for FREE from Audible.com
Why learn a language? | Which language? | What is the best way to study? | General tips | Learning pronunciation | Learning vocabulary | Spaced repetition learning systems (SRS) | Learning grammar | Learning a new writing system | Learning Chinese characters | Careers using languages | My experiences of learning languages
Welcome | Hello | Good morning | Good afternoon | Good evening | Good night | How are you? | Long time no see | Please | Thank you | Excuse me | Sorry | Goodbye | Bon voyage |
Pleased to meet you | What's your name? | Where are you from? |
I (don't) understand | Please say that again | Please speak more slowly | Please write it down | Do you speak English? | Do you speak ...? | How do you say ...? | I don't know |
Go away! | Leave me alone! | Help! Fire! Stop! | Call the police! |
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year | Happy Easter | Happy Birthday |
Good luck | Cheers! | Bon appetit | Would you like to dance? | How much is this? | Have a nice day | Where's the toilet? | Get well soon | I love you | I miss you |
My hovercraft is full of eels | One language is never enough | Stop the world, I want to get off! | This gentleman/lady will pay for everything | Say cheese! |
Telling the time | Days of the week | Months of the year | Seasons |
It's all Greek to me | It's raining cats and dogs | As easy as falling off a log | A sandwich short of a picnic | When pigs fly | Out of sight, out of mind | It's a small world
Idioms in: Czech | French | Russian | Slovak
Proverbs in: Indonesian | Kazakh | Manx | Language-related proverbs |
Entrance / Exit | No smoking | Open / Closed | Toilet signs (Gents / Ladies) |
Esperanto | Interlingua | Ishirkian | Klingon | Lingua Franca Nova | Lojban | Talossan | Toki Pona | Volapük
A brief introduction to Unicode, how to type accented letters and other special characters and a number of pages designed to demonstrate Unicode:
Gallery of language and writing-related art sent in by visitors to this site. If you would like to contribute to this section, please contact me.
Answers to the questions I receive most often. Please read this page before contacting me.
Questions submitted by visitors to this site which I'm unable to answer.
Ancient Egyptian | Arabic | Chinese | English | French | German | Greek | Hebrew | Irish | Italian | Portuguese | Japanese | Russian | Scottish Gaelic | Spanish | Welsh | Tolkien's alphabets and languages
A list of the fonts used on this site.
Fonts for some of the constructed writing systems on this site.
Script charts - the Excel spreadsheets I use to produce the alphabet and pronunciation charts.
Audio recordings - a list of some of the sound files available for download on this site, including collections of useful phrases in various phrases.
Details of the books used as sources of information for this site.
Find out how many people visit this site, how many times they visit and how many pages they look at.
Information about me, the author of Omniglot in many different languages.
A few photos of me and my friends, and the places I've visted and lived in.
Contact form and other ways to contact me.
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Omniglot is not affiliated with any academic or other institution. It is the creation of one man, Simon Ager, with corrections, suggestions and additional material provided by visitors. It started way back in 1998 as a hobby which I worked on in my spare time, but since June 2008 I have been working on it full-time and it is now my main source of income.
While I make every effort to ensure that the information is accurate, there will inevitably be some errors and mistakes. If you spot any, please contact me. Your input is always welcome and very much appreciated.
If you would like to use any of the information or images from this site, please contact me.
All the material is available to you free of charge. I also do my best to answer your questions and provide advice on a range of writing and language-related topics.
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