The triliteral signs represent ordered triplets of phonemes.
Since phonetic complements are more common after triliterals than before them, it is convenient to organize the table according to the second or third sound rather than the first. Therefore we are somewhat unconventionally sorting the glyphs alphabetically by third radical, then second, then first.
For details about objects and living species represented, see Sign List.
This page will probably never have a complete list of triliterals. There are very many of them, and it’s debatable how useful some of them are for the learner; there are triliterals which are only used in words with one basic meaning. But this page will include the most common ones and some of the less common ones as well.
A number of triliterals can stand for more than one possible set of phonemes in different words; in these cases, I list multiple options with each sign (and if the options have more than one third radical, the sign will be in more than one table, accordingly). I am omitting cases where one of the pronunciations is fairly uncommon compared to the others, for simplicity for learners.
Also, many triliterals have common uses but may be attested with a different value in, say, one text from the reign of Ptolemy XI or something. I have tended to omit those values for simplicity.
