Abugida vowel-carriers (was: experimental script)

B. Garcia wrote at 2005-03-24 13:06:38 (-0800)
 > On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 21:34:09 +0100, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:
 >
 > >
 > > Very nice!  I suppose it is no coincidence that it reminds me
 > > of South Indian scripts.  But why are there two signs for /e/?
 > > Is one of them /E/ or /@/?  It seems very popular in con-abugidas
 > > to have a carrier-letter for initial vowels, whereas most Indian
 > > scripts have in principle one letter for each vowel (*) in
 > > initial position -- the main exception is Tibetan which actually
 > > has a carrier-letter as well as a letter for /?/.
 >
 > Thai also has a "silent" letter which from what I recall is used to
 > display vowels.
 >

Gurmukhi has three - the independent /a/ takes /a:/, /ai/ and /au/ and
two signs only used as carriers, one which takes /i/, /i:/ and /e/ and
one which takes /u/, /u:/ and /o/.

(I'd give examples in utf-7, but using Indic scripts in Emacs is too
much work at this point.)