Alphabets of Europe Map

by Jakub Marian

Tip: See my list of the Most Common Mistakes in English. It will teach you how to avoid mis­takes with com­mas, pre­pos­i­tions, ir­reg­u­lar verbs, and much more.

There are three different types of alphabets used in Europe: Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek. They all look somewhat similar and share several letters (which may be pronounced somewhat differently), namely the following ones:

A, B, E, K (К), M, O, T, X, Y (У), and “I” in some languages;
also H and P, which coincidentally look the same in the three alphabets.

The reason for this similarity is quite simple: both the Latin alphabet and the Cyrillic alphabet developed from the Greek alphabet (which in turn is a modified form of the Phoenician alphabet, which ultimately derives from Egyptian hieroglyphs).

The map below shows the geographical distribution of these three types of alphabets in Europe (based on the distribution of native speakers of those languages, not on the official status of the languages):

Alphabets used in Europe, Latin, Greek, Cyrillic
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