> Question: which language requires the fewest number of letters?
> mg
I cannot resist a paradoxical answer: the Korean Hangul script may validly
compete with the champions (Hawaiian and Rotokas).
Yes: the 11,000-more Hangul syllables in Unicode (U+AC00..U+D79F) are just
precomposed combinations of the 265-less Unicode Hangul Jamos
(U+1100..U+11FF).
Pushing the analysis to the bare bones, one can discover that these Hangul
Jamos are built with various combinations of 9 consonant letters (k, n, t,
r, m, p, s, ng, c), 5 vowels (a, e, o, u, i), and 2 diacritics (consonants'
aspiration, vowel's palatalization). Total: 16; only 14 not counting the
diacritics.
_ Marco
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