Not just American English; lots of countries use the same alphabet. Even countries that have more characters than these 26, still often consider these 26 to be

Not just American English; lots of countries use the same alphabet. Even countries that have more characters than these 26, still often consider these 26 to be their alphabet. Weirder still: we often call it the Latin alphabet, but Latin never had some of these characters. No 'j', 'u' or 'w' in Latin, for example.