Downloaded from https://www.everyspec.com FM 34-54 The Cyrillic alphabet (used by Russian, some other Slavic languages, and most of the minority languages of Russia). The Arabic alphabet (used in the Middle East and other areas influenced by Islam). Other alphabets exist, but their use is more restricted. (Figure G-1 shows some of these spoken languages and some of the locations where they are spoken.) The Hebrew alphabet for Hebrew and Yiddish; the Greek alphabet for Greek. The Devanagari alphabet for Sanskrit and other languages of India.
In addition, there are special alphabets for languages like Georgian, Telugu, the other Dravidian languages in southern India, Laos, and other languages in southeast Asia, and Amharic in Ethiopia. Illustrations of the main alphabets are normally available in standard desktop dictionaries. Many unusual scripts are illustrated in Romanization Guides, revised and enlarged edition, put out by the Office of the Geographer, Directorate for Functional Research, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, US Department of State, and the US Board on Geographic Names, dated 1 April 1972.
Reliable detailed information about foreign languages for people who cannot actually read them is available in manuals compiled for professional librarians. These manuals can be found at your local library. The most complex language recognition problem is to distinguish between the numerous languages that use the Roman alphabet. The 26-letter alphabet is used here as the basic alphabet. The other Roman alphabet languages use these same letters, but many use fewer than 26 and a few use more. Unfortunately, just because a letter is not used is not a very useful language recognition criterion.
This is because it is difficult to know whether a letter is absent because it is never used or because it simply was not needed to write the text in question. G-2 ROMAN ALPHABET LANGUAGES