Abugida

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An abugida or alphasyllabary 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 Ethiopic and scripts of the Brahmic family.

For example, in Devanagari there is no basic sign representing the consonant k; rather the unmodified character क represents the syllable ka (a is the so-called "inherent" vowel). This vowel may be changed by adding vowel marks to the basic character, producing other syllables beginning with k-; कि = ki, कु = ku, के = ke, को = ko. These marks are applied systematically to other consonantal characters, e.g. from ल, la, is formed लि = li, लु = lu, ले = le, लो = lo.

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

Most often, the vowel modifications are letters or diacritics, appearing above (के) or below (कु) or to the left (कि) or right (को) of the consonantal character, or in more than one such position 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 postions before the place where it is pronounced. The form of the base character may also be altered, as in Ethiopic (መ = mä, ሙ = mu, ማ = ma; ሰ = sä, ሱ = su, ሳ = sa; ዘ = zä, ዙ = zu, ዛ = za). The various related scripts known as Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics have been described as abugidas in which the modifications consist of rotation and reflection of the character (Inuktitut: ᐱ = pi, ᐳ = pu, ᐸ = pa; ᑎ = ti, ᑐ = tu, ᑕ = ta).

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). The obvious contrast is with syllabaries, which have one distinct symbol per possible syllable, and the signs for each syllable have no systematic graphic similarity. Compare the Devanagari examples above to similar sets of syllables in the Japanese hiragana syllabary: か = ka, き = ki, く = ku, け = ke, こ = ko; ら = ra, り = ri, る = ru, れ = re, ろ = ro.

The term abugida is taken from a conventional name for the Ethiopic script, derived from its first four characters (አቡጊዳ) as ordered in some religious contexts. This order corresponds to the ancestral Semitic character order (aleph, beth, gimel, daleth, ABCD, etc.). The Ethiopic script is an abugida, although its vowel modifications are not entirely systematic.

Some North American Indian scripts, such as Cree syllabics, can be considered abugidas as well, although they are more often referred to as syllabaries.

The largest family of abugidas, however, is the Brahmic family of scripts, which includes nearly all the scripts used in India and Southeast Asia.