Re: Basque & Katzner's Languages of the World

On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 22:16:46 -0500 John Cowan <cowan@...>
writes:
> David Peterson scripsit:
> > In a message dated 11/18/01 11:56:56 AM, cowan@MERCURY.CCIL.ORG
> writes:
> > << The first four letters of the alphabet in Arabic and Amharic
> respectively
> > (except it's "abugida", not "abugadi").  Just like "alphabet"
> from
> > alpha-beta. >>
> >     The first four letters in the Arabic alphabet are alef, baa,
> taa, Taa...
> Right enough.  I should have said "in numerical order"; aleph = 1,
> baa = 2,
> jim = 3, dal = 4, plus enough vowels to make the result
> pronounceable.
> --
> John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
-

Or "the first four Distinct Letter Forms", since /b t T/ are the same
shape, just with different dots; the same goes for the next group, /Z H
x/, and then /d D/.  The first of each group, plus the first letter of
the alphabet, gets ABJD.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "wow, Gryffindor has the same colors as my highschool!"