Re: OT-ish: txt - Could it replace Standard Written English?

Tim May scripsit:

>  > To a first approximation:
I inserted this line for a reason!

>  > The letters of an abjad represents the consonants of the language.
>  > The vowels may be represented by marks placed over, under, or
>  > beside the preceding consonants, and are most often only used when
>  > necessary (for religious texts, books written for children or
>  > foreigners, or in strategic places to remove ambiguity).  It is
>  > common to have a silent consonant onto which vowel marks can be
>  > placed in order to represent vowels that don't follow any
>  > consonant.
> [...]
>
> which seems to me to take the segregation of vowels into a seperate
> class applied to the consonants as the defining factor;
I think so, but the segregation is not so much typographical as into the
required (consonant) vs. optional (vowel) classes.

> the assumption that "an abjad in which vowels are always made
> explicit", while unusual, is not a contradiction in terms.
I think it is a contradiction in terms.  I queried the qalam list, where
Peter Daniels and other script experts hang out.  The consensus so far
is that it's optionality of vowels that makes an abjad: in particular,
Thaana script (used by Dhivehi, the language of the Maldives) is an
alphabet, though it descends from an abjad and uses diacritic vowels --
because those vowels are required.  Ditto for Manchu.  The same is true,
says Michael Everson, of Tengwar as used in the standard spelling of
Quenya (neglecting the optionality of "a").

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