Abugida

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Template:IndicText An abugida, alphasyllabary, or syllabics is a writing system in which consonant signs (graphemes) are inherently associated with a following vowel. Thus, the absence of such a vowel, or other following vowels, are usually indicated explicitly. About half the writing systems in the world, including the extensive Brahmic system used for most Indo-Aryan languages are abugida.

An abugida is to be contrasted with a syllabary, where symbols with similar sounds look nothing like one another, but also to be contrasted with an alphabet proper, where separate symbols are used to denote the consonants and the vowels, although even here some written consonants may acquire vowel characterizations. (Less formally, all of these scripts may also sometimes be referred to as "alphabets").

The term abugida is taken from a Ge'ez name for its own fidel script, derived from its first four letters (አቡጊዳ) based on the Greek alphabet order. This order also corresponds to the ancestral North Semitic character order, aleph, beth, gimel, daleth, or A B G D, much like the word alphabet is derived from the Greek names of the first two letters.

Description

Signs indicating the presence of other vowels (diacritics) may appear above (के), below (कु), to the left (कि), or to the right (को) of the consonantal character, or may surround it as in Tamil கௌ = kau, from க ka. In many of the Brahmic scripts, a syllable beginning with a cluster is treated as a single character for purposes of vowel marking, so a vowel marker like ि -i, falling before the character it modifies, may appear several positions before the place where it is pronounced. For example, the game cricket in Hindi is क्रिकेट krikeţ; the diacritic for /i/ appears before the consonant cluster /kr/, not before the /r/. A more unusual example is seen in the Batak alphabet: Here the syllable bim is written ba-ma-i-(virama). That is, the vowel diacritic and virama are both written after the consonants for the whole syllable.

In many abugidas, there is also a diacritic to suppress the inherent vowel, yielding the bare consonant. In Devanagari, क् is k, and ल् is l. This is called the virama in Sanskrit, or halant in Hindi. It may be used to form consonant clusters, or to indicate that a consonant occurs at the end of a word. Other means of expressing these functions include special conjunct forms in which two or more consonant characters are merged to express a cluster, such as Devanagari: क्ल kla. (Note that on some fonts display this as क् followed by ल, rather than forming a conjunct.)

In the family of abugidas known as Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, vowels are indicated by rotation and / or inversion of the akshara. For example, Inuktitut ᐱ pi, ᐳ pu, ᐸ pa; ᑎ ti, ᑐ tu, ᑕ ta.

The Róng script used for the Lepcha language goes further than other abugidas, in that a single akshara can be a closed syllable: Not only the vowel, but any final consonant is indicated by a diacritic. For example, the syllable [sok] would written as something like s̥̽, here with an underring representing /o/ and an overcross representing the diacritic for final /k/. There are several abugidas of Indonesia which also indicate final consonants with diacritics, but usually these are restricted to one or two nasals such as /ŋ/.

Examples

Examples of abugidas include the various scripts of the Brahmic family, Ethiopic Ge'ez, and Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics.

A typical abugida is Devanagari. There is no basic sign representing the consonant k; rather the unmodified letter क represents the syllable ka; the a is not marked on the symbol, and thus is the so-called inherent vowel. The vowel may be changed by adding vowel marks (diacritics) to the basic character, producing other syllables beginning with k-, such as कि ki, कु ku, के ke, को ko. These diacritics are applied to other consonant characters for other syllables. For example, from ल la is formed लि li, लु lu, ले le, लो lo. Such a consonant with either an inherent or marked vowel is called an akshara.

Though now an abugida, the Ge'ez alphabet was actually an abjad until the 4th century AD. In the Ge'ez abugida, the form of the letter itself may be altered. For example, ሀ hä (basic form), ሁ hu (with a right-side diacritic that does not alter the letter), ሂ hi (with a subdiacritic that compresses the letter, so that the whole fidel occupies the same amount of space), ህ hə (where the letter is modified with a kink in the left arm).

Special Features

The Pahawh Hmong script represents both consonants and vowels with full letters. However, the graphic order is vowel-consonant even though they are pronounced as consonant-vowel. This is rather like the /o/ vowel in the Indic abugidas. Pahawh Hmong is unusual in that, while the inherent vowel /au/ is unwritten, so is the inherent consonant /k/. For the syllable /kau/, which requires one or the other of the inherent sounds to be overt, it is /au/ that is written. That is, a Pahawh akshara appears to be a vowel with an inherent consonant rather than the other way around.

It is difficult to draw a dividing line between abugidas and other segmental scrips. For example, the Meroitic script of ancient Sudan did not indicate an inherent a (one symbol stood for both m and ma, for example), and is thus similar to Brahmic family abugidas. However, the other vowels were indicated with full letters, not diacritics or modification, so the system was essentially an alphabet that did not bother to write the most common vowel.

Thaana is also like an abugida in that vowels are marked with diacritics. However, all vowels are marked, as is the absence of a vowel; there is no inherent vowel. Normally no letter may occur without a diacritic. That is, it is equivalent to an abjad with obligatory vowel marking, like the Arabic alphabet as used for Kurdish in Iraq, as is thus essentially alphabetic. Note that it developed among a population that was already literate with an abugida for their language.

Several systems of shorthand use diacritics for vowels, but they do not have an inherent vowel, and are thus more similar to Thaana and Kurdish than to the Brahmic scripts. The Pollard script, which was based on shorthand, also uses diacritics for vowels; the placements of the vowel relative to the consonant indicates tone.

Evolution

As the term alphasyllabary suggests, abugidas have been considered an intermediate step between alphabets and syllabaries. Historically, abugidas appear to have evolved from abjads (vowelless alphabets). They contrast with syllabaries, where there is a distinct symbol for each syllable or consonant-vowel combination, and where these have no systematic similarity to each other. Compare the Devanagari examples above to sets of syllables in the Japanese hiragana syllabary: か ka, き ki, く ku, け ke, こ ko have nothing in common to indicate k; while ら ra, り ri, る ru, れ re, ろ ro have neither anything in common for r, nor anything to indicate that they have the same vowels as the k set.

Most Indian and Indochinese abugidas appear to have first evolved from abjads (perhaps Aramaic) with the Kharoṣṭhī and Brāhmī scripts. The Kharosthi family does not survive today, but Brahmi's descendants include most of the modern scripts of South and Southeast Asia. Although Ge'ez derived from a different abjad, one theory is that its evolution into an abugida may have been influenced by Christian missionaries from India.

Other types of writing systems

Partial list of abugidas

True abugidas

Abugida-like scripts

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