Syllable
Some languages do not use an alphabet with letters. Instead, each sign may stand for a syllable. For example: Japanese can be written using Kana. A writing system based on syllables is called a syllabary. Since words in languages like English can have many different complex syllables (well over 10,000 can be produced in English), writing such languages using a syllabary would be completely impractical, thus alphabets are much better suited to write languages with complex syllable structures. However, since words in Japanese can be made with just a few simple syllables (around 90), writing such languages are well suited for the type of language.