Re: Abugidas (was: Chinese writing systems)

Florian wrote:
> >This sounds more like a featural syllabary, like Hangul.
>
>Hangul is not at all a syllabary. It is definitly an alphabet. You can be
>tricted because characters are grouped by syllab, but it is only visual.
If so, then the Latin alphabet is among other things a featural code, since,
just to pick an example, |s| marks postalveolarization in the Hungarian
combinations |zs| [Z] and |cs| [tS] (cf |z| [z] and |c| [ts]).

Saying that something is a featural syllabary means that words are written
syllable for syllable, but the sign(s) for each syllable allowsd you to
figure out the component phonemes.

(That Hungarian example, like similar in other orthographies, makes the
Latin alphabet an alphabet with some marginal featural code
characteristics.)



    Andreas

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