How to read the world's alphabets

Published 4 November 2026 · 10 min read

Long before you can read a single word, the shape of the writing on a sign can tell you which part of the world you're in. Dozens of writing systems appear on the world's roads and shop fronts, and many of them belong to just one country or a small group of neighbours. This guide shows how to recognise the main scripts at a glance, and how small details, such as an accent on a Latin letter or one extra Cyrillic letter, can narrow your guess down to a single country.

Latin letters and the accents that give them away

The Latin alphabet, the one used for English, is the most widespread script on Earth. You'll see it across Europe, the Americas, most of Africa and Oceania, and in Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. On its own it tells you little. The useful part is the extra marks that each language adds to its letters.

Some marks belong almost entirely to one language or a small family:

• ñ is Spanish, used in Spain and most of Latin America. Upside-down ¿ and ¡ at the start of questions and exclamations are Spanish too.
• ã and õ, especially in word endings like -ção and -ões, mean Portuguese: Portugal or Brazil.
• ø, often with æ, means Danish or Norwegian (Faroese uses both as well). å appears in those languages and in Swedish, but Swedish writes ä and ö where Danish and Norwegian write æ and ø.
• þ (thorn) together with ð (eth) means Icelandic. Faroese uses ð but not þ.
• ő and ű, with a double accent, are found only in Hungarian.
• ł is Polish, usually alongside ą, ę, ś, ć, ż and ź. Lithuanian also uses ą and ę, but never ł; look for its ė, į and ų instead.
• ř and ů are Czech. Slovak, its close relative, has ä, ô, ľ and ŕ instead.
• ș and ț, with a small comma underneath, are Romanian, used in Romania and Moldova, often alongside ă, â and î.
• ğ, ş and the dotless ı point to Turkish or Azerbaijani. Azerbaijani adds ə, an upside-down e, and uses the letters q and x, none of which Turkish has.
• ß is German, used in Germany and Austria. Switzerland and Liechtenstein write "ss" instead, so a street there is a Strasse rather than a Straße.
• đ, a d with a bar, appears in Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin, and in Vietnamese, which also piles tone marks onto its vowels (ư, ơ, ế, ộ). Slovenian uses č, š and ž but not ć or đ, which helps separate it from Croatian.
• ë is everywhere in Albanian, so you'll see it in Albania, Kosovo and parts of North Macedonia.
• ħ, ċ, ġ and ż together mean Maltese.
• Latvian uses bars over long vowels (ā, ē, ī, ū) and commas under some consonants (ķ, ļ, ņ), while Estonian has õ, ä, ö and ü.

Other marks are shared and need a second clue. ç turns up in French, Portuguese, Catalan, Turkish, Azerbaijani and Albanian. ä and ö appear in German, Swedish, Finnish and Estonian; Finnish stands out with its long words full of double letters, like the town name Hämeenlinna. Catalan, spoken in eastern Spain and Andorra, has a rare dotted double l, as in col·legi (school).

Indonesian and Malay use plain Latin letters with no accents, so in Southeast Asia an accent-free sign suggests Indonesia or Malaysia, while a crowd of tone marks means Vietnam. For close European neighbours, see telling neighbours apart in Europe.

Cyrillic: one alphabet, many languages

Cyrillic is easy to recognise: it mixes familiar-looking letters such as А, Е, О and Т with unfamiliar ones like Ж, Д, Л, Ш and Я. Watch out for false friends: Cyrillic Р sounds like R, С like S, Н like N and В like V. Cyrillic is used for more than ten languages, and a handful of letters tell them apart.

• Russian uses ы, э and ъ, and sometimes ё, but none of the extra letters below.
• Ukrainian has і, ї, є and ґ, and doesn't use ы, э or ъ. Spot an ї (an i with two dots) and you're in Ukraine.
• Belarusian uses і and ў (a u with a small curve on top) and doesn't use и at all.
• Bulgarian uses ъ as an everyday vowel, as in the country's own name, България, and has no ы or э.
• Serbian has ђ, ћ, џ, љ, њ and ј. Macedonian shares љ, њ, џ and ј, but has ѓ and ќ instead of ђ and ћ, plus ѕ.
• Kazakh adds letters such as ә, ғ, қ, ң, ө, ұ and ү. Kyrgyz adds only ң, ө and ү, and Mongolian only ө and ү.
• Tajik adds ғ, ӣ, қ, ӯ, ҳ and ҷ.

Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina use both Cyrillic and Latin letters (our guide to telling the Balkans apart goes further). Russian also appears widely on signs in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, so check for the extra letters before settling on Russia. Uzbekistan officially uses Latin letters, with oʻ and gʻ, though Cyrillic is still common there.

Greek, Georgian and Armenian

Greek is used in Greece and Cyprus. Many capitals look like Latin ones, but look for Δ, Λ, Π, Σ, Φ and Ω, and for the small accent mark that sits on almost every lower-case word of more than one syllable. Main road signs usually repeat place names in Latin letters underneath.

Georgian is used only in Georgia. Its letters are round and curly, many with a loop on top or a tail dropping below the line, and everyday writing has no capital letters, so a line of Georgian looks smooth and even.

Armenian is used only in Armenia. It looks more upright than Georgian, built from arches and hooks, and many letters resemble u, n, h and q. The pair ու, which makes an "oo" sound, is very common. Azerbaijan, the third country of the Caucasus, uses Latin letters with ə, so a glance at any sign tells the three apart.

Arabic, Hebrew and Ge'ez

Arabic and the languages that share it

Arabic runs from right to left, and its letters join up into a flowing line, with dots above and below that tell similar letters apart. Each letter changes shape depending on where it sits in a word. You'll see it from Morocco to Oman. Two Arabic giveaways are the word beginning ال (al-, meaning "the") and the word ending ة, a small loop with two dots on top.

Other languages use the script with extra letters of their own:

• Persian, in Iran and Afghanistan, adds پ (p), چ (ch), ژ (zh) and گ (g).
• Urdu, in Pakistan, uses those and more, such as ٹ, ڈ and ے, and is usually written in a sloping style called Nastaliq, in which each word seems to step down from right to left.

Numbers help too. Egypt and much of the Arabian Peninsula often use Eastern Arabic digits (٠ ١ ٢ ٣), and Iran uses its own variety of them, while Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia mostly use the 0 to 9 digits familiar in Europe, alongside plenty of French. Morocco also writes Tifinagh, a script used for the Amazigh (Berber) languages, on many official signs. Its letters are simple shapes such as circles, crosses and lines: ⵜⵉⴼⵉⵏⴰⵖ.

Hebrew

Hebrew, used in Israel, also runs right to left, but its letters stand separately and look square and blocky, and everyday writing usually leaves out the vowel dots. Israeli road signs normally show Hebrew, Arabic and English together.

Ethiopia's Ge'ez script

Ethiopia has its own script, called Ge'ez or Ethiopic, used for Amharic and several other languages, and for Tigrinya in neighbouring Eritrea. Each symbol stands for a whole syllable: a basic consonant shape gains a small stroke, a leg or a loop to change its vowel, so characters come in families of similar shapes. Many look like little arches standing on legs, as in ኢትዮጵያ (Ethiopia). On road signs, it means Ethiopia or Eritrea.

Scripts of South Asia

Devanagari is the script whose letters hang from a straight bar along the top, like washing on a line. It is used for Hindi across much of northern India and for Nepali in Nepal. Road signs in India often show English together with Hindi or a regional language.

Bengali also has a top bar, but many of its letters have a pointed, triangular look, such as ব. It is the script of Bangladesh and of West Bengal in eastern India. India has many other scripts: Gurmukhi, used for Punjabi, also has a top bar, while Gujarati looks rather like Devanagari with the top bar taken away.

Further south the top bar disappears. Tamil, used in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, in Sri Lanka and on official signs in Singapore, has rounded letters with loops and small dots above some letters.

Sinhala, the main script of Sri Lanka, is curlier still: almost every letter is built from loops and swirls. Sri Lankan signs usually show Sinhala, Tamil and English together.

Two smaller scripts complete the region. Bhutan writes Dzongkha in Tibetan script, whose letters hang below a top line, and the Maldives uses Thaana, which runs right to left and looks like a row of little hooks with marks above and below.

Mainland Southeast Asia: loops, curls and circles

Four neighbours have their own scripts, all descended from ancient scripts of India. With a little practice they are easy to tell apart.

• Thai (Thailand): most letters start with a small loop, tone marks float above the line, and words are not separated by spaces, so a sentence looks like one long string.
• Lao (Laos): closely related to Thai and similar at first glance, but rounder and softer-looking, with fewer letters. When you can't decide, check the traffic: Laos drives on the right, Thailand on the left.
• Khmer (Cambodia): ornate and busy, with little hooks and curls on top of the letters and extra small letters tucked underneath, so a line of Khmer looks taller and denser than Thai.
• Burmese (Myanmar): built almost entirely from circles and half-circles. Nothing else looks quite like it.

Korean, Japanese and Chinese

Korean Hangul was designed on purpose in the 1400s, and its letters are built from simple shapes: lines, boxes and, above all, circles. Letters are stacked into square blocks, one block per syllable, as in 한국어 ("Korean language"). Small, perfect circles (ㅇ) inside square characters mean South Korea or North Korea.

Japanese mixes three kinds of writing. Kanji are characters borrowed from Chinese. Hiragana are simple, curvy symbols such as あ, の and る that hold sentences together. Katakana are sharper and more angular, such as カ, ン and ト, and are used mostly for words borrowed from other languages. Any line with these kana mixed among more complex characters is Japan. The swirly の, meaning "of", is so common that it's often the first clue you'll spot.

Chinese uses characters only, with no kana and no circles. There are two forms. Simplified characters, introduced in the 1950s and 1960s with fewer strokes, are used in mainland China and in Singapore. Traditional characters, with more strokes, are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Compare a few common characters:

Then use the second language on signs to choose between the traditional-script places: Hong Kong pairs Chinese with English, Macau pairs it with Portuguese, and Taiwan usually adds place names in Latin letters. Chinese shop signs appear all over the world, so check the road signs too.

Quick reference and a routine for unfamiliar signs

When a sign stumps you

1. Joined, flowing letters with lots of dots? Arabic script; look for Persian or Urdu extras. Square, separate letters are Hebrew.
2. Letters hanging from a top bar? South Asia: Devanagari, Bengali or Gurmukhi, or Tibetan in Bhutan.
3. Every character a little square? Circles mean Korean, curvy kana mean Japanese, neither means Chinese.
4. Loops and curls with no top bar? Compare Thai, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, Sinhala and Tamil.
5. Latin or Cyrillic? Hunt for the special letters.

Writing works best alongside other clues. The driving side splits Thailand from Laos, or Hong Kong from mainland China, in a second, and the beginner's guide shows how to turn a good hunch into points.

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