alphabetic 0.0.4

A lightweight Python module for querying language alphabets, codes, syllabaries and logographics

Alphabetic

A lightweight Python module for querying language alphabets, codes, syllabaries and logographics

Description

Alphabetic is a small project that was born out of the need to find out the alphabet of several languages for a private NLP project. Determining the alphabet of a language is required for various NLP tasks, e.g. for classifying the language of a given text or for normalizing it (e.g., by removing noisy/random strings).

The idea is simple: given the name of the desired language, Alphabetic first translates the language internally into an ISO 639-2 language code and then returns the corresponding alphabet.

Installation

The easiest way to install Alphabetic is to use pip, where you can choose between (1) the PyPI repository and (2) this repository.

• (1) pip install alphabetic
• (2) pip install git+https://github.com/Halvani/alphabetic.git

The latter will pull and install the latest commit from this repository as well as the required Python dependencies.

Usage

A simple lookup of a language's alphabet can be performed as follows:

from alphabetic import Language, Alphabet

print(*Alphabet.by_language(Language.Greek))

# Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ζ Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ξ Ο Π Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ Ψ Ω α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο π ρ σ τ υ φ χ ψ ω

The output of by_language is a list of utf8-strings. Depending on the selected language, the alphabet can be further restricted in terms of letter casing:

from alphabetic import Language, Alphabet, LetterCase 

print(*Alphabet.by_language(Language.Bosnian, letter_case=LetterCase.Lower))

# а б в г д е ж з и к л м н о п р с т у ф х ц ч ш ђ ј љ њ ћ џ

Note that for some so-called non-bicameral languages such as Hebrew or Arabic, which have no upper/lower case, such restrictions are not possible. Therefore, in such cases, the entire alphabet is returned:

from alphabetic import Language, Alphabet, LetterCase 

print(*Alphabet.by_language(Language.Hebrew, letter_case=LetterCase.Lower))

# א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט י כ ך ל מ ם נ ן ס ע פ ף צ ץ ק ר ש ת

print(*Alphabet.by_language(Language.Arabic, letter_case=LetterCase.Lower))

# ا ب ة ت ث ج ح خ د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ق ك ل م ن ه و ي

According to Wikipedia: "A true alphabet contains separate letters (not diacritic marks) for both consonants and vowels." In order to strip out diacritics from a desired alphabet, you can restrict the output of by_language as follows:

print(*Alphabet.by_language(Language.Czech, strip_diacritics=True))

# A B C C h D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c c h d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Moreover, you can strip out diphthongs that are present for several languages:

print(*Alphabet.by_language(Language.Albanian)

# Entire alphabet: A B C Ç D Dh E Ë F G Gj H I J K L Ll M N Nj O P Q R Rr S Sh T Th U V X Xh Y Z Zh a b c ç d dh e ë f g gj h i j k l ll m n nj o p q r rr s sh t th u v x xh y z zh

print(*Alphabet.by_language(Language.Albanian, strip_diphthongs=True))

# A B C Ç D E Ë F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z a b c ç d e ë f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v x y z

Features

• Currently 117 languages are supported, with more to follow over time
• At the heart of Alphabetic is a json file that can be used independently of the respective programming language or application
• Besides langauge alphabets, Alphabetic also provides codes (e.g., Morse or NATO Phonetic Alphabet), syllabaries and logographics

Supported languages

Open to view all supported languages

Language	ISO 639-2 code
Abkhazian	abk
Afar	aar
Afrikaans	afr
Albanian	sqi
Amharic	amh
Arabic	ara
Armenian	arm
Assamese	asm
Avar	ava
Avestan	ave
Bambara	bam
Bashkir	bak
Basque	baq
Belarusian	bel
Bislama	bis
Boko	bqc
Bosnian	bos
Breton	bre
Bulgarian	bul
Buryat	bua
Catalan	cat
Chamorro	cha
Chechen	che
Cherokee	chr
Chichewa	nya
Chukchi	ckt
Chuvash	chv
Corsican	cos
Croatian	hrv
Czech	ces
Danish	dan
Dungan	dng
Dutch	nld
Dzongkha	dzo
English	eng
Esperanto	epo
Estonian	est
Ewe	ewe
Faroese	fao
Fijian	fij
Finnish	fin
French	fra
Gaelic	gla
Georgian	kat
German	deu
Greek	gre
Guarani	grn
Haitian	hat
Hausa	hau
Hawaiian	haw
Hebrew	heb
Herero	her
Hindi	hin
Icelandic	isl
Igbo	ibo
Indonesian	ind
Italian	ita
Javanese	jav
Kabardian	kbd
Kashubian	csb
Kazakh	kaz
Kirghiz	kir
Komi	kpv
Korean	kor
Kumyk	kum
Kurmanji	kmr
Latin	lat
Latvian	lav
Lezghian	lez
Lithuanian	lit
Luganda	lug
Macedonian	mkd
Malay	may
Maltese	mlt
Maori	mao
Mari	chm
Moksha	mdf
Moldovan	rum
Mongolian	mon
Mru	mro
Nepali	nep
Norwegian	nor
Occitan	oci
Pashto	pus
Persian	per
Polish	pol
Portuguese	por
Punjabi	pan
Quechua	que
Rohingya	rhg
Russian	rus
Samoan	smo
Sango	sag
Sanskrit	san
Serbian	srp
Slovak	slo
Slovenian	slv
Somali	som
Sorani	ckb
Spanish	spa
Sundanese	sun
Swedish	swe
Tajik	tgk
Tatar	tat
Turkish	tur
Turkmen	tuk
Tuvan	tyv
Twi	twi
Ukrainian	ukr
Uzbek	uzb
Venda	ven
Volapük	vol
Welsh	wel
Wolof	wol
Yakut	sah
Yiddish	yid
Zulu	zul

Contribution

If you like this project, you are welcome to support it, e.g. by providing additional languages (there is a lot to do with regard to ISO 639-2). Feel free to fork the repository and create a pull request to suggest and collaborate on changes.

Last remarks

As is usual with open source projects, we developers do not earn any money with what we do, but are primarily interested in giving something back to the community with fun, passion and joy. Nevertheless, we would be very happy if you rewarded all the time that has gone into the project with just a small star 🤗