October 9th is 한글날, or Hangul Day. Hangul is the Korean alphabet, and it has a fascinating history, so let's celebrate! (YT). Better yet, here are some videos that will help you learn Hangul for yourself: [Introduction] [Advanced] [Hangul Rap!] [Beginner's Vocabulary]
posted by bardic on Oct 9, 2009 - 15 comments

Japanese Element Symbols is an introduction for non-Japanese to the Japanese language through Kanji symbols, its alphabet, elements of Japan's culture, and what to expect on the culinary front.
posted by netbros on Aug 6, 2009 - 12 comments

The alphabet in satellite imagery of Slavonia. [via]
posted by parudox on Jun 29, 2009 - 7 comments

Java Demo: "four-letter words have a special status in the english language and culture. counting in at over 1650 words,...this small project is an attempt to give a spacial overview of the entirety of this part of english language heritage, as well as to explore and visualize relations between all those words."
posted by hortense on Jun 4, 2009 - 18 comments

Joshua's Alphabet Dominoes: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
posted by twoleftfeet on May 20, 2009 - 41 comments

Make your handwriting into a font with Yourfonts. Download the PDF, draw your alphabet, scan and upload, then download the finished result. Examples. Via Drawn!
posted by Rinku on Feb 2, 2009 - 31 comments

Blocks with letters on. Blocks with letters on. Blocks with letters on.
posted by Sitegeist on Oct 28, 2008 - 15 comments

The Geek ABCs. A is for Alignment, which is why I stabbed you... G is for Grue, likely to eat you... R is for RuneQuest where old people roll the dice.
posted by GuyZero on Oct 15, 2008 - 47 comments

A is for Automobile, B is for Bazooka. An Iranian kids' coloring book made during the Iraq-Iran War, intended to teach the Farsi alphabet, has been scanned and uploaded to Photobucket. [more inside]
posted by CrunchyFrog on Sep 13, 2008 - 13 comments

Baby Animal Alphabet [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster on Jul 21, 2008 - 49 comments

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
posted by Del Far on Jun 5, 2008 - 37 comments

Monday Flash Fun: Alpha Assault
posted by StrikeTheViol on Apr 28, 2008 - 26 comments

ABC3D is an elegant pop-up book featuring the letters of the alphabet. Plus: a flip book that generates a rainbow.
posted by tepidmonkey on Mar 24, 2008 - 16 comments

Whew--just squeaked this post in for Black History Month. Vintage YouTubery of Richard Pryor, Jackie Robinson, Bill Cosby, and James Earl Jones, each reciting The Alphabet on Sesame Street. And then Patti LaBelle blows 'em all away with a Gospel Rendition.
posted by Kibbutz on Feb 27, 2008 - 24 comments

Phonetic alphabets have taken many forms across many languages. But why go with Alpha-Bravo-Charlie when you can choose Bread-Debt-Indictment , Abides-Bowling-Chinaman, Are-Beady-Cue, and Ackbar-BadgerBadgerBadger-Camwhore? What's the MetaFilter phonetic alphabet?
posted by blahblahblah on Aug 16, 2007 - 72 comments

Illustrator Apelad has many various projects & flickrsets, including the fairly well known Laugh Out Loud Cats & the Hodgman inspired Hobo Names project, but some of the lesser known ones are awesome as well, including this set of images created for common HTTP Errors, this Alphabet of Monsters, and a personal favorite, Monkey!, wherein users send in a monkey description and receive in return a drawing.
posted by jonson on Jul 8, 2007 - 11 comments

The concept of alphabetization was invented at the Great Library of Alexandria in the third century BC, with words grouped by first letter. It wasn't until 1053, in the Elementarium doctrinae erudimentum that recursive alphabetization (where "Aab" comes before "Aac" and after "Aaa") appeared in rudimentary form. You'd think that by now we'd have the process down, but controversies still rage. Does "sea foam" come before "seaborne"? Does "Michael Jackson" come before "Nick Cave"? Throw in international characters and an occasional foray into ASCIIbetical order and it's no wonder the alphabet can be so frustrating.
posted by L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg on Jun 21, 2007 - 62 comments

Army men as alphabet (Warning: serious plastic army men carnage).
posted by miss lynnster on Apr 2, 2007 - 17 comments

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q s t u v w x y z
via
posted by jonson on Jan 30, 2007 - 28 comments

Ancient Alchemical Alphabetologists. From the wonderful Giornale Nuovo: Basoli's fantastical architectural alphabet, Steingruber's blueprint alphabet, De Bry's Biblical decorative alphabet, and general figurative alphabets.
posted by Falconetti on Oct 21, 2006 - 14 comments

Write your name in Tengwar, the Elvish language/alphabet created by JRR Tolkien. You can work with Tengwar fonts based on Middle Earth languages and runes and see many examples of the script via a Google Image search. According to Tolkien, "there is quite a bit of linguistic wisdom in it." There are certainly websites devoted to his languages and thier history. And It took some thought and work to make the speech sound right in the movies.
posted by persona non grata on Aug 29, 2006 - 27 comments

The Ecology of Magic is the abbreviated first chapter of David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous. Abram explores the intersection of phenomenology, synesthesia and linguistics to discover the magic of the alphabet, the sacred winds, and ultimately, the root of animism. Abram finds the locus of these superstitions not in an imagined metaphysical sphere, but rooted in our sensuous experience of the world around us. He attributes much of our cavalier attitude towards our environment to our separation from our own experience, and ultimately, our loss of magic. "The fate of the earth depends on a return to our senses."
posted by jefgodesky on Aug 29, 2006 - 21 comments

"In 1953, while working a hotel switchboard, a college graduate named Shea Zellweger began a journey of wonder and obsession that would eventually lead to the invention of a radically new notation for logic. From a basement in Ohio, guided literally by his dreams and his innate love of pattern, Zellweger developed an extraordinary visual system - called the “Logic Alphabet” - in which a group of specially designed letter-shapes can be manipulated like puzzles to reveal the geometrical patterns underpinning logic."
posted by vacapinta on Apr 17, 2006 - 30 comments

Friday Finger Frenzy How fast can you type the alphabet? 9.083 seconds here...
posted by skjønn on Dec 2, 2005 - 77 comments

Hear the International Phonetic Alphabet. Voiced by one Paul Meier. One of the coolest things ever. [via languagehat]
posted by kenko on Jan 7, 2005 - 27 comments

Dear MEFI, I just love Alphabetilately, and I think you will too! Yours sincerely, taz.
posted by taz on Sep 17, 2004 - 19 comments

Art, Link, Letter: Abba Richman's beautiful The Alphabet and Dean Allen's rustic Found Alphabet are collections of letter shapes found in various outdoor objects.
posted by iconomy on Jun 25, 2004 - 11 comments

Alphabet Evolution
See the evolutionary progression of alphabets through time and cultures. Examples include Cuneiform, Phoenician, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, modern Cyrillic and the Latin character sets. The Latin is the best documented character set and requires a wide screen to see all the evolutionary events (especially Y and Z)
posted by Irontom on Oct 7, 2003 - 9 comments

Just in: Jakob Nielsen Declares the Letter “C” Unusable.
posted by Su on Apr 29, 2003 - 28 comments

It took the Smithsonian author and naturalist Kjell B. Sandved 24 years to find all the letters that went into the butterfly alphabet. Along the way he found butterfly wings imprinted with salutations and smiling, happy faces, and threatening expressions on wings and flowers with menacing expressions that say "Do Not Eat Me". Explore the site yourself by going directly to the gallery without looking at all of the images I've linked to, or read the story of how Sandved discovered his magnificent obsession.
posted by iconomy on Apr 29, 2003 - 23 comments

Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, Xray, Yankee and Zulu. Now I know my NATO phonetic ABCs, next time won't you sing with me?
posted by iconomy on Feb 14, 2003 - 30 comments

Google + Too Much Time on Hands = "Who Owns the Alphabet?" The English-language alphabet gets fully Googled, one letter at a time.
posted by Dirjy on Dec 9, 2002 - 6 comments

Omniglot is a guide to writing systems, and it's flat-out awesome. It covers alphabetic writing systems (usual alphabets as well as abjads), syllabic alphabets and syllabaries, logograms, ideograms, semantic-phonetic compounds ... a milliard things I didn't know about. Plus there are big lists of examples from dozens of languages, from Abkhaz to Zhuyin fuhao. My favorite so far is Tai Lue - it's just so pretty. (link from Fimoculous)
posted by gleuschk on Dec 18, 2001 - 27 comments

Learn your ABCs... A very nice piece of flash (via harrumph)...
posted by TNLNYC on Feb 9, 2001 - 3 comments