Talk:Abugida

message: Are the tengwar abugidas? -- Error
:They can be, depending on the mode. If you write vowels with dots, they're an abugida. If you write them with separate letters (e.g. mode of Beleriand), they're more alphabet-like (especially if you use separate characters for each vowel rather than a generic vowel character which bears marks). A bit like the difference between Hebrew and Yiddish: both use the same script, but Hebrew uses it as an abjad (if you ignore matres lectionis) while Yiddish uses it as an alphabet. -- pne 15:10, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tengwar 

message: An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the Abugida article, and they have been placed on this page for your convenience.Tip: Some people find it helpful if these suggestions are shown on this talk page, rather than on another page. To do this, just add  to this page. — LinkBot 10:33, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:LinkBot/suggestions/Abugida|Link suggestions]] 

message: As me and Gwalla have both reverted from our respective edits now, I thought it best to bring the matter do discussion.
In my opinion, the formulation that the vowelless characters are used in consonant clusters and syllable-finally is redundant and, more importantly, perhaps unclear to larger audience. I am not familiar with how South Asian scholars describe them, but in an encyclopedic article that isn't important. My point is that saying that they are used in consonant clusters and word-finally, it should be clear and unambiguous to most what is meant, and there is no need to resort to the notion of syllable, which has no clear and universally agreed status even among linguists.
Of course, I am open to correction and clarification of the opposing view, but until then, I hope that passage wouldn't be further edited. ---Oghmoir 11:01, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A consonant cluster is a group of adjacent consonants in the same syllable, like the /st/ in "start" or the /dz/ in "kids". A syllable-final consonant is like the /m/ in "hamburger". Linguists differentiate between them because some languages allow the latter but not the former.  — Gwalla | Talk 01:14, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In every discussion on phonology that I have encountered during my linguistics studies, consonant clusters have been defined as any kind of a group of adjacent consonants, regardless of syllable boundaries. For example, the The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics defines consonant clusters as: "A sequence of consonants before, after, or between vowels. E.g. [str] is a medial consonant cluster in words like astray." Anyway, many linguists would say that the /s/ in "start" and /z/ in "kids" are syllables of their own, because they are higher on the sonority hierarchy, but many wouldn't. ---Oghmoir 09:32, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The usage of consonant characters without an inherent vowel in Brahmi scripts 

message: Does anyone know the Ge'ez characters for A-bu-gi-da? Thank you. --Immanuel Giel 14:29, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure if you're still looking for answers, but A-bu-di-da is spelled out in Ge'ez and Amharic in the intro of the page.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Peelinglayers (talk • contribs) 02:17, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abugida in Ge'ez 

message: Mainly because it *does* possess pure consonants, marked by a dot on top of the consonant. If there is no contention, I will remove it from the list of "true" abugidas. Kingsleyj 00:21, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is the case for most Indic and Ethiopic scripts. Tamil does not have letters for plain consonants; for that it needs a diacritic. That's a defining feature of abugidas. kwami 05:52, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, the Ethiopian script doesn't have a letter for pure consonants anymore. Formerly, the first form was a pure consonant (when it was an abjad), but the sadis (sixth) form which can be used for consonants is technically "Cə" rather than an inherent consonant. It can be a consonant in some cases (usually word-final, except sometimes when connected in a phrase), but the basic letter form is for a vowel. — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 21:15, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tamil script *not* a true abugida 

message: Why classical hebrew is not a abugidas? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.205.105.82 (talk • contribs)  09:15, 11 June 2006  (UTC)
:Wasn't classical Hebrew still an abjad? I thought that it was all consonants with perhaps diacritics to mark vowels (like Arabic), but not actual modification of the letter forms (or reorientation, etc.). Actually, I guess if the diacritics were necessary in all writing, then it would be an abugida, but since it's extraneous to the writing of Hebrew, then it wouldn't be an Abugida. — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 21:15, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hebrew is written with an abjad system. Vowels and consonants are written seperately whereas in an abugida system, basic characters combine both consonant and vowel. In an abugida, it requires a special symbol to remove the vowel inherent in the character. Interlingua 21:51, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Hebrew

message: "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 word akshara is used without being defined or linked. Wikipedia's own page is not very helpful:
*in Sanskrit grammar, "syllable", see Shiksha
*a grapheme of script of the Brahmic family. 
*in philosophical terms is the opposite of the word  "perishable", a name of Brahma.
 
As used in this article, it evidently refers to the abstraction consisting of the shape of a glyph without reference to its orientation: a definition close to but not identical with the second one above. If this definition is standard in some community, it should be
#added to the akshara article and
#referenced from this page.
If not, it should be either defined here or, better, replaced by an explanation that doesn't require a hapax legomenon.
Thnidu 20:27, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "akshara" 

message: From the article:
:"Evolution
:As the term alphasyllabary suggests, abugidas have been considered an intermediate step between alphabets and syllabaries."
The idea that various writing systems fit on a single evolutionary scale (coincidentally with alphabet being on top, nonetheless) seems rather inaccurate. Different writing systems have different strengths and weaknesses, as opposed to one writing system being more "advanced" than the other.  Whether a particular writing system is better suitable depends on several factors including phonology. I think syllabics fit Japanese just fine, for example. It's more of an apples vs oranges or spoon vs fork comparison. One didn't necessarily evolve from another, nor is there a particular predetermined evolutionary sequence. For example, Pitman shorthand is listed as abugida-like despite being derived from the English alphabet. —Tokek 23:38, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. In any case, there seems to be more of a connection between abjads and abugidas, and between syllabaries and logographic writing systems. I can't think of an abugida that evolved from an alphabet. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 04:13, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Evolution 

message: ; Description
:For text information processing on computer, other means of expressing these functions include special conjunct forms in which two or more consonant characters are merged to express a cluster, (...) This expedient is used by ISCII and South Asian scripts of Unicode.
This says about rendering of glyphs on the information processing, but doesn't say about written scripts: the virama character for this use won't be visible/writable character. It might be described in ISCII or Unicode#Ligatures. --Hatukanezumi 03:54, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other use of virama 

message: What about written Japanese such as Hiragana/Katakana?  They employ consonants followed by vowels with the exception of the stand-alone "n" sound... are these considered abugidas as well or have I misunderstood the category?
:Hiragana and Katakana are pure syllabaries. They have separate, unrelated characters for each CV (consonant-vowel) combination, whereas abugidas use the same character for each syllable where the consonant is the same, marking the vowel with a diacritic or other means (this makes abugidas sound like alphabets but I'm just trying to make clear how they differ from syllabaries). So when you look at a Hiragana chart, you'll notice that the characters for ki and ke, for example, look completely different. But if you look how those same syllables are written in Devanagari, for instance, you'll see that they use the same base character (for the consonant) but a different diacritic (for the vowel). (ka in Devanagari would be written without any diacritics, which makes it an abugida, not an ordinary alphabet.) Hope this helps :) Oghmoir 22:58, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Asian languages? 

message: From the intro:
:Others, however, prefer to consider such systems of writing syllabaries, "semi-syllabaries", or "alpha-syllabaries".
It is not clear what "such" refers to here. What systems are called semi-syllabaries? AxelBoldt 02:38, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Abugidas. kwami (talk) 07:00, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-syllabaries? 

message: Could someone add an IPA pronunciation for this word? I have never heard it spoken and it is so obscure that not a single online dictionary has it. −Woodstone (talk) 09:43, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I haven't been able to find anything. Put the question up on the Ge'ez article. kwami (talk) 16:13, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

text: In Amharic it's . Evidently stress is not phonemic. I've always stressed the gi, but that's just me. kwami (talk) 09:58, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope, the first vowel is most definitely not ə, in Amharic.  It is a, the long a, as in Father. One experience that is worth hearing is an Ethiopian singing the ABC song (the one to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star) with the Abugida.  "Ah, bu, gi, da, hey, wuh, zo... beh, gu, di, ha, wey, zih, zho..." etc. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 11:28, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: By the way, in Ge'ez, as noted in the article, the first vowel is ä (not ə, and not a as it is in Amharic either!) Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 11:38, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Amharic "ä" is  (we don't really know about Ge'ez, of course). Amharic "ə" is , not . kwami (talk) 17:39, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation 

message: Use of presence of a default inherent vowel as the sole or primary criterion should be deemphasized. Placing vowels relative to a consonant rather than simply as part of a liner sequence is a more basic feature. --JWB (talk) 21:07, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Abugidas are segmental scripts where vowels are obligatory but take second billing. Rather like tone most Roman alphabet adaptations (in Hanyu Pinyin all full tones are written, but 'neutral' tone is not; in Tongyong Pinyin it is the high tone that is not written). kwami (talk) 00:02, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

text: How's that? kwami (talk) 00:17, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition 

message: According to both Daniels and Bright (in discussions on the qalam mailing list, roughly 2001), these two concepts are not the same. There are scripts which are abugidas but not alphasyllabaries, and vice versa. I'm not sure whether that necessarily means the article needs to be split in two, as they were clearly trying to capture roughly the same thing, but the way the article is written now it makes it seems as if these are two different names for the same class. That's not the case. Technically speaking, both the intentions and the extensions, of these classes are different. LarsMarius (talk) 21:08, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  These are two different concepts 

message: many authors have said that the brahmi script of india is not an "abugida"
:Who? It is the prototypical abugida. kwami (talk)
the views of the current article are not accepted by a lot of respectable script authors.
:Who? kwami (talk)
suggest creation of seperate article for the brahmi script. 
:There is one. kwami (talk)
i will add sources later to this effect. LanguageExpert (talk) 07:18, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Please make sure you're familiar with WP:RS. kwami (talk) 07:00, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seperate section required for brahmi script 

message: I have a problem with the table found in "Description" section, but not sure how to fix it. The current table says Canadian: Final consonant position: Small, raised. For Inuktitut, Cree, Ojibwe and Blackfoot, this is generally true, but the statement is utterly false if you're describing one of several different varieties used by the Carrier languages. While most are written as a smaller, raised glyph, in the Carrier varieties, finals can be in the raised, mid-line or lowered positions, with each position assigned to a different consonant value, so they are not interchangable. Also, in some text, such as in this one in Ojibwe, other than in the initial title (and the small raised "sh" in the "shk" clusters through-out the document), the finals are not written as a small, raised text! (they are shown as full-sized i-vowel forms). CJLippert (talk) 00:26, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, we should make it clear that this describes the original system. kwami (talk) 05:50, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error in describing Canadian Syllabics in the "Description" section. 

message: I see the title as "Tpology"; probably should be "Typology". Left it as is because I don't know how to edit references, and have not found it easy to learn how; also, because that could have been an intentional spelling. If it was just a typo, after fixing it, this section might as well be deleted to reduce clutter. Regards, Nikevich (talk) 09:30, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor error in Ref. 3? 

message: The example phrase in Roman does not match with those in Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurumukhi, Oriya. The 3rd word in Roman starts "girvārṇa ", ie, g + small-i + r + v + long-ah + r + ṇ + short-a. All the transliterated text show long-i instead of short-i, and the second r is missing from all. Either the Roman is correct, or all the transliterated ones are correct. Vedabit (talk) 08:19, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: You should probably better raise that issue on Wikimedia Commons. The picture seems to suffer (or have been suffered) from several other errors as well. — Christoph Päper 13:58, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error in comparison chart graphic. 

message: ^ Peter T. Daniels (Oct–Dec 1990), "Fundamentals of Grammatology", Journal of the American Oriental Society 119 (4): 727–731, JSTOR 602899
The path:
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic129948.files/Daniels.pdf
no longer exists.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.170.32.110 (talk) 21:27, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broken reference 

message: The contrast of the definitions of abugida and alphasyllabary should be moved to this new section, which was the general part of the description.  The fact that they are different should be left in the introduction. - RichardW57 (talk) 22:22, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: So edited. - RichardW57 (talk) 22:17, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

text: The use of syllable structures to clarify inherent vowels would certainly be helpful. −Woodstone (talk) 06:21, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

text: Changed in accordance with my suggestions. - RichardW57 (talk) 22:17, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: General Description

message: The comparative table of features is not universally applicable for mainland SE Asia.  Would it make sense just to list the oversimplifications in notes? RichardW57 (talk) 22:22, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Family-Specific Features

message: The following statement makes no sense.
 
:The mora a consonant letter represents, either with or without a marked vowel, is called an akshara.
I have moved the definition of the akshara to the introduction, and corrected it to refer to the unit of an abugida.
- RichardW57 (talk) 21:45, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Akshara 

message: Shouldn't Hangul used in Korean be included in the article? It is syllabically organized but alphabetically analysed — there is a letter for each phoneme, but they are clustered together into syllables (with the vowel to the right or beneath the consonant). The clustering changes the proportions of the symbols (though not the shape to any drastic extent). To me, that's an abugida.David Cannon (talk) 01:52, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I came here, to write this. Yes, it’s also a very nice abugida, as it seems to be free of quirks, and adding additional features like an order of letters in the syllables. — 2A02:908:4C16:A740:0:0:0:3 (talk) 23:36, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  From the standpoint of Wikipedia, isn't the question whether any reliable source analyzes Hangul as an abugida, as opposed to, say, an alphabet with some interesting kerning rules? My impression is that the answer is "no". Nitpicking polish (talk) 18:47, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Korean / Hangul 

message: I have removed "alphasyllabary" from the lede, per:
* 
Onceinawhile (talk) 15:29, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I have now added it back with sources explaining some of the debate. Onceinawhile (talk) 08:12, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alphasyllabary? 

message: Honestly, if anything I came out of this more confused than when I went in. I'm sorry, I'd fix this if I could, but I'm totally lost. At a bare minimum, would it be too much to ask for an in-line example of an abugida with an accompanying in-line explanation? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:47, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I have tried to do something about that. Is it better now, do you have any suggestions? --Glennznl (talk) 09:58, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: It is definitely an improvement. I'll take a look at it later and maybe do some copyediting, but it makes much more sense now. Thank you so much for your work! The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:45, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  I tried to read this