alphabets

[David J Birnbaum]

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Students of writing systems often distinguish SCRIPT (Latin, Cyrillic,
Greek, etc.) from ALPHABET (English, Russian, Ukrainian, etc.--and not all
writing systems are alphabetic, of course).

These are technical terms and will not always be understood by
non-specialists (e.g., the Latin alphabet is a subset of the Latin
script), but that is neither here nor there, and a distinction can be made
by those who need one. The identification of distinct scripts is sometimes
more cultural than objective (note that the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek
scripts, for example, have common ancestry), but the same may be said of
the identification of languages.

Cheers,

David
==================================================
Professor David J. Birnbaum      djbpitt+ at pitt.edu
The Royal York Apartments, #802  http://www.pitt.edu/~djbpitt/
3955 Bigelow Boulevard           voice: 1-412-624-5712
Pittsburgh, PA  15213  USA       fax:   1-412-624-9714

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