Revised:

Abugida. A writing system in which consonants are indicated by the
base letters which have an inherent vowel, and in which other vowels
are indicated by additional distinguishing marks of some kind
modifying the base letter. The Ethiopic script is an abugida, as are
the many scripts of South and Southeast Asia that are historically
derived from the ancient Brahmi script. The term "abugida" is derived
from the first four letters of the Semitic order of the letters of
the Ethiopic script (ALF, BET, GAML, DANT); The order of vowels (-a
-u -i -a) is that of the traditional vowel order in the first four
columns of the Ethiopic syllable chart.

Comment is invited.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com