* John Cowan
|
| What is Tengwar? Structurally, it is an abjad, but in most modes,
| vowel points are mandatory not optional. In standard Quenya
| orthography, you can omit the a-diacritic, which makes it look like
| an abugida (as JRRT notes, "clm" = "calma", because "cl-" is
| impossible and "-m" is impossible; "calama" is a possible but
| nonexistent reading). There are also plene modes that are fully
| alphabetic.

Personally, I tend to use a model that distinguishes between scripts,
ortographies, and languages, and it seems that most others do
something similar. To me it seems that Tengwar breaks this model by
introducing an extra level between "script" and "ortography" through
its system of "modes".

Maybe the right way to see Tengwar is as a "signary", and each
individual mode as a "script".

| Returning to the Real World, is Yiddish orthography still an abjad,
| or has it too become alphabetic?

Hmmmm. Is abjadness a property of a script or of an orthography?

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