Re: Abugidas (was: Chinese writing systems)

Daniel Andreasson wrote:


>John Cowan wrote:
>
>> In an abugida, the basic written forms are consonants.
>> When the consonant appears in its basic form, it is
>> understood to be followed by a vowel, called the *inherent
>> vowel*.  Exactly which vowel this is depends on the
>> language, though it is often "short a".  To indicate the
>> use of a different vowel, a "vowel sign" is placed above,
>> below, before, or after the consonant (sometimes in
>> multiple parts in different places), which overrides the
>> inherent vowel.  A mark called a virama is used when there
>> is no vowel at all.  The Ethiopic script, uniquely, writes
>> its vowel marks attached to the consonant.
>
>Hm. So the writing system, which Barry Garcia came up with
>and I developed a bit further, would that be an abugida?
>Or is it simply a syllabary?
>
Abugida, as I understand it.
For a language with pure CVCV...structure with 20 C and 5 V, you would thus
have 20 C symbols and 4 V diacritics (since a C symbol without diacritic
means "C plus inherent V(whatever that is, typically /a/)".  If the language
perchance allows word-initial V syllables, then you would need either 5
distinct "initial-V" symbols (like Devanagari IIRC), or a dummy
vowel-carrier symbol (which by itself would represent the inherent V)
modifiable with the V diacritics (like Buginese/Makassarese whose V-carrier
by itself represents /a/)

A syllabary for the same language would have 100 distinct symbols, one for
each CV combination.  There would not necessarily be any relationship
between, say, the symbols for PA, PE, PI etc.  Adapting such a system to a
language that allows more complex syllables (like English!) produces a lot
of problems.

Reply