abugida
Noun
Meaning
abugida (plural abugidas)
(linguistics) A kind of syllabary (syllabic alphabet) in which a symbol or glyph representing a syllable contains parts representing a vowel and a consonant, such that symbols for syllables not including the default vowel are generated by adding a common notation to indicate the vowel that it does include.
(linguistics) A kind of syllabary (syllabic alphabet) in which a symbol or glyph representing a syllable contains parts representing a vowel and a consonant, typically such that symbols for different syllables are generated by adding, altering or removing the vowel portion, often by applying a diacritic to a stable consonant symbol.
Synonyms
Examples
An abugida is defined as "a type of writing system whose basic characters denotes consonants followed by a particular vowel, and in which diacritics denote other vowels".
General The Kannada script (Aksharmale or Varnamale) is a phonemic abugida of forty-nine letters, and is written from left to right.
A third type, called abugida or alphasyllabary, is one where vowels are shown by diacritics or modifications of consonantal base letters, as in Devanagari and other South Asian scripts.
Devanagari is typically an abugida augmented with dedicated letters for initial vowels, though some traditions use अ as a zero consonant as the graphic base for such vowels.
Evans used features of Devanagari script and Pitman shorthand to create his initial abugida.
Formally, an alphasyllabary that is not an abugida can be converted to an abugida by adding a purely formal vowel sound that is never used and declaring that to be the inherent vowel of the letters representing consonants.