Re: Tolkien's elfish script (was: Re: demuan identifiers re-visited)

>From: Fabian <rhialto@...>
>l-gharef Eric hu kiteb
>
> > Actually, Devanagari and other Brahmi-derived scripts such as Tibetan
>are
> > the same way. Like Tengwar, each consonant has its own basic shape, and
>the
> > vowels are added as diacritics. Also, Devanagari characters without any
> > vowel marking default to /a/, whereas marking /a/ is optional in Quenya.
>
>Good point. Personally, I regard most indic scrpts as being separate from
>true syllabaries, as each glyph has a default vowel sound. glyphs for other
>CV combos are made with diacritics, unlike true syllabaries which have
>totally different glyphs.
>
One classification I have seen is:
Abjad -       consonantal script e.g. Arabic, Hebrew
                 vowels not marked or marked with optional diacritics
Abugida -   Indic and Ethiopic scripts
                  vowel included as part of composable characters
                  a vowel included in the base form
Syllabary -  Japanese  kana
                  symbols for syllables that are not composable
Alphabet -  Latin, Hangul, &c.
                  Separate independant symbols for both consonants
                  and vowels
Mixed -       Japanese and Korean
Other-        English :)

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