USAGE: Abugidas

Andreas Johansson scripsit:

> I've, BTW, always been somewhat mystified that someone ever came on the
> idea of having graphemic zero indicate /a/ (or /O/ and so on depending
> on language) rather than phonemic zero. In a language like Sanskrit
> it may perhaps save typing, but it's certainly the last idea I would
> have stumbled on. People are weird.
Well, Tengwar (as used to spell Quenya, anyhow) is an abjad with mandatory
vowel marks, but the step from that to an abugida is small, as JRRT
himself indicates rather offhandedly in a footnote:

        In Quenya in which _a_ was very frequent, its vowel sign
        was often omitted altogether.  Thus for _calma_ 'lamp' _clm_
        could be written.  This would naturally be read as _calma_,
        since _cl_ was not in Quenya a possible initial combination,
        and _m_ never occurred finally.  A possible reading was
        _calama_, but no such word existed.

And indeed we see that the Ethiopic and Brahmi abugidas descend from
an abjad.  Canadian Syllabics is also an abugida, where the vowel
signs are rotations and the virama (that's the word someone was
looking for as a replacement for "vowel killer") is superscripting.

--
One art / There is                      John Cowan <jcowan@...>
No less / No more                       http://www.reutershealth.com
All things / To do                      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
With sparks / Galore                     -- Douglas Hofstadter

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