someone 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.

Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>No. Symbols for vowels are not present at all. Period.

Marco Cimarosti wrote:

>So Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac are not abjads?

At 07:31 AM 7/8/2004, Peter Daniels wrote:

>Unvocalized, they are. Add the points, and they're alphabets.

Are alif, waw, and ye to not be considered logn vowels? Rather,
are they to be considered /?/ /w/ and /y/, respectively?

-patrick