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abugida (ah-boo-GEE-duh) - n., a writing system in which consonant phonemes are represented by graphemes and vowels are represented by diacritic marks.
Many (most?) abugidas, each consonant letter comes with a "default" vowel sound, which gets replaced when a diacritic mark is applied, while in others a vowel mark has to be applied to all consonants. Languages written in abugidas include most languages of the Indian subcontinent including Hindi (which uses the Devanagari script, one of many Brahmic scripts), most languages of Ethiopia and Eretria (using the Ge'ez script), and Cree and Ojibwe (using Canadian Aboriginal syllabics). Abugidas have been studied as a class considered distinct from syllabaries* since at least the 1940s, but this name for them was not coined until 1990 by linguist Peter T. Daniels from the name used for the Ge'ez system, which comes from the first four letters ʾa(lf) / b(et) / g(äml) / d(änt) (an ordering descended from Hebrew**) combined with the first four vowel sounds ä / u / i / a, so the four syllables a + bu + gi + da.
* I'll get to syllabaries later.
** And no, Hebrew is not written with an abugida -- more on this tomorrow.
---L.
Many (most?) abugidas, each consonant letter comes with a "default" vowel sound, which gets replaced when a diacritic mark is applied, while in others a vowel mark has to be applied to all consonants. Languages written in abugidas include most languages of the Indian subcontinent including Hindi (which uses the Devanagari script, one of many Brahmic scripts), most languages of Ethiopia and Eretria (using the Ge'ez script), and Cree and Ojibwe (using Canadian Aboriginal syllabics). Abugidas have been studied as a class considered distinct from syllabaries* since at least the 1940s, but this name for them was not coined until 1990 by linguist Peter T. Daniels from the name used for the Ge'ez system, which comes from the first four letters ʾa(lf) / b(et) / g(äml) / d(änt) (an ordering descended from Hebrew**) combined with the first four vowel sounds ä / u / i / a, so the four syllables a + bu + gi + da.
* I'll get to syllabaries later.
** And no, Hebrew is not written with an abugida -- more on this tomorrow.
---L.
