Richard Wordingham wrote:
> It'd be better to have the letters and sounds in the same orders,
> e.g. 'ALEF, YEH and WAW' ... '/Ä/, /Ä«/ or /Å«/'.
Ooops!
> It can be argued that this is not quite true - that /i:/ is /ij/
> and /u:/ is /uw/, in which case there is nothing impure about these
> two cases! The same applies to the classical diphthongs /ai/
> and /au/.
This might be the correct *historical* explanation of how the spelling
evolved, but I don't think this is how Arabic spelling is perceived today.
Notice that, in fully vowelled text, there is a subtle difference between
yaa' and waaw used to spell /j/ and /w/ and the same two letters used to
spell long vowels and diphthongs: in the former case, yaa' and waaw carry a
sukuun, in the second they don't.
> ALEF for /Ä/ remains impure.
I assume that alif used to represent a glottal stop, before it became a mute
carrier for the hamza. So, historically, you could perhaps analyze /a:/ as
/a/ + glottal stop.
> There are false plene vowels (e.g. WAW in /abu/ <ALEF, BEH, WAW>),
> and they are impure usages.
OTOH, there are unmarked long /a:/'s, which are only indicated in vowelled
text by means of superscript alifs.
However, I guess that such tiny details don't belong to the short definition
of "abjad" that Michael is trying to come up with.
--
Marco