Alphabet

An alphabet is a way of writing in which letters, or groups of letters, represent phonemes. Most languages use alphabets, but not all: Chinese varieties are famous for their characters, and Japanese uses a mixture of mostly Chinese-derived characters (kanji), two mora-based systems similar to syllabaries, and a smattering of the Roman alphabet, roomaji, often seen on signage and for company names. The Korean alphabet primarily arranges letters into syllables rather than words. This is, however, not the case with most alphabets, and the International Phonetic Alphabet, based on the Roman alphabet that most languages use, is the one used to represent the sounds of any language. Other famous alphabets are the Cyrillic and Greek alphabets, related to the Roman, and the completely unrelated Arabic alphabet, used among others for that language and Persian.