I've been looking at Pahawh Hmong today, but am struggling to classify
the script correctly. I've worked through some of the sample on page
623 of WWS. As far as I can make out there are three kinds of symbols:

- C symbols, which represent anything from one to three consonant
sounds,

- VC symbols, which represent one or two vowels followed by a
consonant, and

- diacritics indicating tones,

and that a CVC word is written VCC.

So far, so good, but what type of script is this really? I guess if
this were all there was to the script we would call it a syllabary.
However, if we look closer at the VC symbols, it seems that the final
consonant is systematically indicated with a diacritic on the wovel,
and that there are two versions of each VC symbol (one on each side of
table 57.1).

This means that it's not a syllabary, since it is systematic, and it's
definitely not an abugida. It is like an alphabet, but doesn't seem to
be one. (I'm also having trouble working out what the sound values of
the characters actually are.) Can anyone help?

--
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
ISO SC34/WG3, OASIS GeoLang TC <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >