Talk:List of alphabets

I think it's important that we make a distinction between alphabets or scripts, and languages. For instance Sanskrit is a language, but there is no such thing as a Sanskrit script. Sanskrit has been written in many scripts over time including but not limited to: Brahmi, Gupta, Siddham, andDevanagari. mah&#257;b&#257;la 10:59, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * Thanks for making this point. I was considering removing those entries myself, but I wasn't sure it would be correct to do so (due to my lack of knowledge on the subject of Indian languages and scripts). -- uriber 11:08, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Merge discussion
Given the nuances of what constitutes a "true" alphabet (versus other things like syllabaries), I propose that this list be merged and redirected to the more general List of writing systems. - dcljr (talk) 01:09, 18 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm inclined to agree that there would be benefits in merging this listing into list of writing systems. The former is a subset of the latter, and having the same list maintained in two separate places will lead to inconsistency of treatment and synchronisation. Personally I also find it more useful to have all the differing scripts documented on the same page, tho' as the list becomes more extensive this could lead to its own difficulties.
 * The alternative would be to replace the current alphabetic writing systems on the overall list with just a link to this list of alphabets, and thus avoid duplication and inconsistency. However, since in certain cases classification into a single type may be problematic, removing these to another page would mean that one could not easily check on whether an entry had already been recorded, or mis-classified. However, I'd be open to other suggestions. --cjllw | TALK  04:57, 2005 July 19 (UTC)
 * I thought that such a merge would be a good thing just for the same reason. So, I support.--Imz 17:23, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but I didn't realize the mergeto template was going to link to the other talk page. Please continue the merge discussion over at Talk:List of writing systems. - dcljr (talk) 18:14, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

well,I didn't agree such proposal,because some writing systems like Chinese do not fall into the catogery of alphabets.Ksyrie 23:17, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Phonetic alphabets
Hi! I was recently cleaning up the phonetic alphabet disambiguation page, and there were a lot of entries which were phonetic alphabets, but because they are unlikely to be the intended meaning of "phonetic alphabet" themselves, did not merit entry on teh disambiguation page. The standard practice for such a situation is to move those entries to an appropriate list, and link to that list from there.

I do hope I haven't ruined the merger in adding the list here!

Also, I'm unable to adequately find a nice way to distinguish a linguistic phonetic alphabet from what I would call a "military" phonetic alphabet &mdash; if you know the correct terms, then please feel free to correct it. I have left it as "phonetic alphabet (linguistics)" and "phonetic alphabets (military)" in the hope that this will be clear enough for most purposes, and that someone else can correct it. (PS I'm not watching this page, so if you want to talk to me, get me on my user talk page.) Neonumbers 10:55, 7 September 2006 (UTC)