Abugida

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Template:IndicText An abugida, alphasyllabary, or syllabics is a writing system composed of signs (graphemes) denoting consonants with an inherent following vowel, which are consistently modified to indicate other vowels, or, in some cases, the lack of a vowel. Examples 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 the so-called "inherent" vowel. The vowel may be changed by adding vowel marks to the basic character, producing other syllables beginning with k-, such as कि ki, कु ku, के ke, को ko. These diacritics are applied systematically to other consonantal characters. 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.

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.)

The 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 Ge’ez, the prototype 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 compresses the letter, so that the whole fidel (akshara) occupies the same amount of space), ህ he (where the letter is modified with a kink in the left arm).

In the family of abugidas known as Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, vowels are indicated by modification (rotation and reflection) 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 each akshara is a full syllable: Not only the vowel, but any final consonant is indicated by a diacritic. For example, the syllable [sok] would written as something like Template:IPA, 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/.

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.

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 do indicate that they have the same vowels as the k set.

The term abugida is taken from a conventional name for the Ge'ez script, derived from its first four letters (አቡጊዳ) as ordered in some religious contexts. This order corresponds to the ancestral Semitic character order, aleph, beth, gimel, daleth, or A B C D.

Historically, 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 descendents include most of the modern scripts of South and Southeast Asia. Canadian Syllabics was derived from Devanagari, and is thus in the Brahmic family, or was at least influenced by Devanagari in its creation. Although Ge’ez derived from a different abjad, its evolution into an abugida may have been due to the influence of Christian missionaries from India.

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