The Hawaiian alphabet has 13 letters. One is the okina. It shows a short stop between sounds, like the gap in oh-oh. As of November 2026, the Khmer alphabet is the longest in use. It has 74 letters. It is the writing of Cambodia.
In 1443, King Sejong had a Korean alphabet made. It is now called Hangul. It has 14 basic consonants and 10 vowels. In South Korea, people have a day for it. It is Hangul Day, on October 9.
Sequoyah worked alone for about 12 years. He wanted a way to write Cherokee. He finished in 1821. In his writing, each mark stands for a syllable of spoken Cherokee. It is a part of a word, not one sound.
Hebrew is written from right to left. So is Arabic. Boustrophedon is a Greek word for a way of writing. It means ox turning, like an ox turning at the end of a row.
Old English had two letters we do not use. Wynn stood for the w sound. Thorn stood for a th sound. The sign & was once treated as the 27th letter of the alphabet. It came right after Z.
Fingerspelling means spelling out a word with hand signs. The signs match its letters. Each sign is one letter of the word. People spell out names this way too.
In 1835, an American music publisher named Charles Bradlee claimed the rights to the ABC song. It has the same tune as a well-known nursery rhyme.
Words to know
- alphabet: set of letters
- syllable: word part
- Hangul: Korean alphabet
- fingerspelling: hand letters
- okina: short stop
