I came across the omniglot website this afternoon (see reference 1), and found it unusual enough to be worth an immediate post.
Amongst other things, it contains a catalog of the alphabets of a large number - hundreds I should think - of the world's languages. Or, in the case of languages without an alphabet in quite our sense, what they do have. A useful resource for those, for example, who are interested in exploring the links between alphabets and the neuronic structures in our brains used to decipher the retinal images of their letters, that is to say to read the writing. The site also also does numbers. And there is plenty of tutorial material, suitable for beginners such as myself.
Some of these languages were only written down quite recently, perhaps by missionaries, and some of them were invented.
What is most unusual about this site is that it appears to be the private venture, almost a supersonic hobby, of one Simon Ager, with the hobby being funded by a mixture of donations and advertisements, these last being significant as he gets more than a million hits a month.
No idea how accurate the site is. I would have thought that quality control would be a problem without a fair amount of help & collaboration.
Reference 1: http://www.omniglot.com/index.htm.
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