Marco Cimarosti wrote:

>
> Richard Wordingham wrote:
> > It'd be better to have the letters and sounds in the same orders,
> > e.g. 'ALEF, YEH and WAW' ... '/Ä*/, /Ä«/ or /Å«/'.
>
> Ooops!
>
> > It can be argued that this is not quite true - that /i:/ is /ij/
> > and /u:/ is /uw/, in which case there is nothing impure about these
> > two cases! The same applies to the classical diphthongs /ai/
> > and /au/.
>
> This might be the correct *historical* explanation of how the spelling
> evolved, but I don't think this is how Arabic spelling is perceived today.
>
> Notice that, in fully vowelled text, there is a subtle difference between
> yaa' and waaw used to spell /j/ and /w/ and the same two letters used to
> spell long vowels and diphthongs: in the former case, yaa' and waaw carry a
> sukuun, in the second they don't.
>
> > ALEF for /Ä*/ remains impure.
>
> I assume that alif used to represent a glottal stop, before it became a mute
> carrier for the hamza. So, historically, you could perhaps analyze /a:/ as
> /a/ + glottal stop.
>
> > There are false plene vowels (e.g. WAW in /abu/ <ALEF, BEH, WAW>),
> > and they are impure usages.
>
> OTOH, there are unmarked long /a:/'s, which are only indicated in vowelled
> text by means of superscript alifs.
>
> However, I guess that such tiny details don't belong to the short definition
> of "abjad" that Michael is trying to come up with.

No such details belong there, since the pointing and even the matres
make Arabic unsuitable as an example of an abjad.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...