The signs of the Szekler alphabet are not fully estimated and summed up in an organized way. The full collection of signs of the Szekler alphabet represents a historical value.
The modern (XX.th and XXI.st century) writing styles with a few exception narrows writing down to letters. Users of writing today do not know, that the Szekler alphabet also contains word and sentence signs. The publications disregard the usage of word and sentence signs. Instead what is being used, are signs of different vowel harmonies, liturgies, and sometimes “mysterious capita dictioniums” are mentioned. The authors mainly define the szekler writing as letter writing and its collection of signs are called ABC's / alphabets. However, the facts oppose this.
The Nikolsburg alphabet
The Nikolsburg alphabet which originates in the 1400's, contains 46 signs. Out of these are:
29 letters(a, b, c, cs, d, j, e, f, g, gy, h, i, l, ly, m, n, ny, o, p, r, zs, s, t, u, v, ö, ü, sz, z) 13 syllabeles (enc, eck, encs, end, aty, ety, ak, unk, nj, emp, ek, zt, st)
at least 3 word signs (us "ős"/ ancient,old/, ent "Ten", engy "nagy"/ great, big/).
The Nikolsburg alphabet (is varied; besides letters also contains word and sentence signs) kept the order of the thousands years old Szekler writing's original order. Without separation, it contains both letters and signs of different vowel harmonies. This order is closely related to the Ugarit and Khazar writings' sign orders – meaning it corresponds with the earliest signs of Latinate characters, a representation of a 4,000 year old tradition. The letters mostly originate from the names of gods, or their traits and characteristics; their orders are assigned based on their contents within the ancient religion. This ranking is also present in the Chukch word-sign order, in which the “godly trios” can be identified in the beginning. This historical order of signs is only kept by the Nikolsburg alphabet, every other Szekler alphabet – with regard to its time's academic discipline – follows the order of the Latin alphabet.
Rudiment
János Thelegdi in his academic description written in 1598, titled Rudiment, specifies 65 Szekler signs in the following chategorizations:
“The Szeklers of Transylvania (Erdély) have 32 letters”. (23 consonants and 9 vowels)
“The Szeklers have a few signs to shorten the text, which are annexed to the consonants and vowels. “ (He introduces 21 liturgies)
“There are also other annexations, where two consonants annex without a vowel.” (He introduces 9 liturgies)
“They also have few syllables which are similar to reptiles based on their form. These are not formed by actual letters. These are called heads of words (capita dictionum) by the Szeklers.” (He introduces 3 signs)
Thelegdi clearly states, that the Szekler writing contains not only letters, but syllable signs as well. Mentions a third group of signs - the capita dictionum - which are called syllable signs, however their word-sign characteristics can be seen. Thelegdi breaks up the order of Szekler signs, and categorizes the different types of signs into separate lists.
The above mentioned two lists of signs differ – not explained in the current text – the Szekler sign lists are not identical. None of the lists of the Szekler signs contain all of the Szekler writing's full sign collection, and all of them somewhat differ from one and other.
The number of signs
The known number of the Szekler writing could be as many as 80-100 – which order of magnitude is a characteristic of syllable writings. The exact number of signs – for many reasons – however can not be defined easily. One reason is due to the option of ligature formations, which indicates the creation of further signs.
Another reason is due to the picture like traits of signs. During the natural evolution of writing, the writing which has developed from picture-writing, contains many forms that could be seen as usages of decoration. In the case of readable decorations it is only a question of decision, whether they are regarded as writing signs or not. Due to these reasons, in the storage rooms of museums, on the pages of books and on many objects there are a lot of signs which still need to be reviewed and taken into account.
