Re: How about a typology for input methods

áÐ3áS•áS¤áˆ* áЫáЕá‰Ýብ wrote:

Who?

> I've tried to follow the Abugida debates in recent years but find it
> challenging. In large part because the "Abugida" definitions seems to
> be in the eye of the beholder.

There are exactly two beholders, me and Bill Bright, and our competing
definitions have been discussed in my WWS footnote and his article in
the Urbana journal publishing the King Sejong conference (some day all
my cartons will be unpacked), previewed in *Written Language and
Literacy*.

> As to Ethiopic origins of the term "Abugida", it is a column wise
> rotation of the Ge'ez (classic ethiopic) syllabary in the Hebrew order
> (preserved in the first column):
>
> http://ethiopic.org/Collation/Abugida.html
>
> The name comes from the sound values of the first 4 syllables of the
> first column. The rotated syllabary is simply a learning aid for
> students who learn the syllabary (in Halehame order) musically, the
> rotation helps trip them up when they have to recite the letters
> (think of how the "alphabet song" breaks down if you mix the letters
> up). So in this sense the "Abugida" is a permuted syllabary table (or
> if ethiopic is an "abugida" and not a syllabary then the Abugida is a
> permuted "abugida" table...).

The ' b g d order is known in traditional Ethiopian circles, because it
appears in Psalm 119 (just as it does in the Septuagint). It has
liturgical uses.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...