Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> > How about "symbols for most vowels are optional, or may not
> be present
> > at all"? As opposed to an alphabet, where they must be present.
>
> No. Symbols for vowels are not present at all. Period.

So Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac are not abjads?

> > >> * An abugida has the concept of an inherent vowel, which must be
> > >> explicitly overridden if not present.
> > >
> > > An abugida has the inherent unmarked vowel; overriding is
> irrelevant
> >
> > How does one indicate vowels other than A, or consonant
> clusters, in an
> > abugida without overriding them? If they go totally
> unmarked, aren't we
> > really using an abjad?
>
> No, we're providing minimal definitions. The use of vowel marks is
> implicit in the definition.

How so?

If you just say "An abugida has an inherent unmarked vowel", full stop, what
the audience gathers is that *only* that vowel can be expressed in writing.

> > OK, I freely admit my error wrt Ethiopic. I'm neither the
> > first nor the
> > last to be misled (*) by the fact that it's encoded that way.
> > (* semi-gratuitous use of the word)
>
> That what's encoded what way?

He said he was misled by the way *Unicode* encodes Ethiopic: one code per
sillable, as it does with genuine syllabaries such as katakana or Cherokee.

_ Marco