Language Analysis Cheats
Quick-reference guides for identifying and distinguishing writing scripts
You solved the cipher. As your reward, this library of scripts is now open to you.
Arabic vs. Turkish vs. Persian
How to distinguish Arabic script from Ottoman Turkish and Farsi — key letter forms, diacritics, and special characters unique to each.
Hebrew Script Variants
Palaeo-Hebrew (Phoenician-derived), Square/Ashuri script, Rashi script, and modern cursive — timeline and visual differences.
Syriac Script Families
Estrangela, Serto (Western), and Madnhaya (Eastern) — how stroke weight, vowel marking, and letter shape vary.
Proto-Greek Variants
Linear A vs. Linear B vs. Cypriot syllabary vs. early Greek alphabets — visual identification guide.
Aramaic → Descendant Scripts
How Aramaic branched into Hebrew, Nabataean → Arabic, Syriac, Mandaic, and Palmyrene — family tree with key visual markers.
South Semitic: Geʽez & South Arabian
Ancient South Arabian (Musnad) vs. Geʽez (Ethiopic) — shared origins, divergent letter forms, vowel systems.
Coptic vs. Greek
Extra Demotic-derived letters in Coptic (ϣ, ϩ, ϫ, ϭ, ϯ, ϥ), supralinear strokes, and abbreviation conventions.
Runic Alphabets
Elder Futhark vs. Younger Futhark vs. Anglo-Saxon Futhorc vs. Medieval runes — character counts and visual cues.
Ogham Quick Reference
The twenty Ogham letters, reading direction (bottom-up on stone), stroke groups, and how to distinguish from tally marks.
Glagolitic vs. Early Cyrillic
How to tell apart the two Slavic scripts — round Glagolitic vs. angular Cyrillic, shared letter values, dating cues.
Indic Script Family
Brahmi → Devanagari, Tamil, Tibetan, Thai, Burmese — headline (shirorekha), vowel attachment patterns, and visual sorting.
African Writing Systems
N'Ko, Tifinagh, Vai, Bamum, Nsibidi, Adlam — overview of indigenous African scripts with key identifiers.
Cuneiform vs. Hieroglyphics
Wedge impressions (Sumerian/Akkadian) vs. pictorial signs (Egyptian) — media, direction, determinatives.
East Asian Logographic Systems
Chinese Hanzi vs. Japanese Kanji/Kana vs. Korean Hanja/Hangul — stroke order cues, mixed-script tells, and quick identification.
Thaana & Dhivehi
The unique RTL alphasyllabary of the Maldives — Arabic-numeral origins of letter shapes, vowel diacritics, visual distinctiveness.
Phoenician & Descendant Alphabets
Phoenician → Greek, Aramaic, Latin — the great branching. Letter name continuities (aleph/alpha, beth/beta) and shape evolution.
Mesoamerican Writing Systems
Maya hieroglyphs, Aztec pictographs, Zapotec, Mixtec, and Isthmian scripts — visual identification guide. No full Unicode encoding exists yet.
Latin Script Palaeography
Roman Capitals to Textura to Humanist — how to identify and distinguish every major Latin book hand from antiquity through the Renaissance.