What alphabets are not used in mathematics and why?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-19 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Writing Systems

Not a mathematician, but:

Mathematics as practiced in the West is a European invention, and it calls for its symbols on European patrimony. That means:

  • Roman (italics, to differentiate from text)
  • Greek (avoiding Greek letters that look identical to Roman letters, such as omicron, and half the capitals)
  • Hebrew, because it’s the next closest prestigious alphabet to the European patrimony. Even that gets used very rarely: aleph and beth are infinity numbers, gimel is a function; is there anything else?

I’m not aware of any systematic or even ad hoc use of other scripts; Cyrillic would be the next candidate along.

Answers from actual mathematicians welcome. 🙂

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