Wikipedia says Georgian alphabet with 41 characters is the record, Any other languages out there with more?

Answer 1

Well, I guess that depends on how you define "character" and "alphabet". The Thai alphabet is is a syllabic alphabet consisting of 44 basic consonants, each with an inherent (default) vowel. The 18 other vowels and 6 diphthongs are indicated using diacritics which appear in front of, above, below of after the consonants they modify.

Answer 2

Yes, that's the record. The writing systems for Tamil, Thai, Amharic, etc. are not technically alphabets (not to mention Chinese, which isn't written with anything even close to an alphabet). These languages, where a diacritical mark for the following vowel sound is incorporated into the consonant letter, are written with what are called alphasyllabaries or abugidas (there is a very small technical difference between the two terms). They are not written with alphabets. The definition of a true alphabet is that the syllable is not the primarly level of representation, but the individual sound (both consonants and vowels) is the primary level of representation. Thus, Georgian has an alphabet, but Tamil, Thai, and Amharic have alphasyllabaries or abugidas; and Hebrew and Arabic have abjads (where only the consonants are represented, vowel markings are either sporadic or optional). One answer mentioned an African language. These languages have up to 150 different sounds, but their ALPHABETS only use the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet, perhaps with up to 4 additional symbols. The complex sounds are represented by combinations of the 26 letters.

EDIT for following answer: Khmer writing is also an alphasyllabary system, NOT an alphabet. Indeed, nearly all the writing systems of South Asia that descend from the ancient scripts of northern India are alphasyllabic--Tamil, Sanskrit, Thai, Khmer, Burmese, etc.

Answer 3

It always depends what you count as an alphabet. Amharic in Ethiopia has a syllabic script with 200-odd "letters".

Japanese has two syllabic scripts plus Chinese characters, many of which can be read in several different ways.

Answer 4

I read in Guiness that the Khmer tongue has over 70
letters in its alphabet. Is that true or is their
alphabet really a syllabary, like Japanese hiragana?

Answer 5

Yes. I don't remember exactly which one but there is a language in Africa that has 57 characters. A friend of mine from Zaire told me that.

Answer 6

no i don't think. french has about 33, german has 30 and english only 26 so i don't know any languages with more characters

Answer 7

Armenian alphabet has 39.This is high enough,isn't it?

Answer 8

Well if characters is what you are looking for, then the Chinese has 47,035.

Answer 9

Yo, tamil has got 210+ characters!!! and chinese has even more!