alphabetlike

Alphabetlike is an adjective used to describe writing systems or orthographies that resemble an alphabet in having a relatively small, fixed repertoire of graphemic symbols that map to phonological units, typically individual phonemes, with discrete and relatively regular correspondences. The term is informal and used mainly in comparative or typological discussions rather than as a formal category in linguistics.

In practice, alphabetlike scripts are not always true alphabets, but they share several key features: a finite set of symbols, a tendency for symbols to stand for phonemes or phoneme-distinct units, and a linear writing direction. Some systems described as alphabetlike may lack one or more criteria used to define a strict alphabet, such as universal one-to-one phoneme mapping across the entire language or complete vowel representation.

The term is often employed in historical or typological contexts to discuss scripts that exhibit alphabetic tendencies in the process of script development or in comparative typology where "alphabetlike" signals proximity to alphabetic organization without meeting all formal definitions. True alphabets include Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic, among others; scripts such as Hangul are often described as alphabetlike because they encode phonemic information in a way that resembles alphabetic principle, even though Hangul is deliberately featural. By contrast, abjads (like Arabic) and syllabaries (like Kana) are generally not described as alphabetlike.

Overall, alphabetlike serves as a descriptive, comparative label indicating near-alphabetic properties in a writing system, rather than a strict technical term.