Michael Everson wrote:

>
> Daniels:
>
> abugida a type of writing system whose basic characters denote
> consonants followed by a particular vowel, and in which diacritics
> denote the other vowels
>
> The Unicode Standard:
>
> Abugida. A special type of writing system encompassing the many
> scripts of South and Southeast Asia that are historically derived
> from the ancient Brahmi script. The term abugida is derived from the
> North Semitic alphabetic order: alef, bet, gimel, dalet.
>
> Daniels commented:
>
> >The differences: No definition whatsoever; omission of Ethiopic;
> >wrong statement of etymology (maybe John was subconsciously ashamed
> >of the poorness of the passage, and omitted it Freudianly!)
>
> So, given this, and admitting hand-on-heart that Peter Daniels is
> right and that the existing Unicode definition sucks, one might
> propose the following revision:
>
> Abugida. A writing system in which consonants are indicated by the
> base letters which have an inherent vowel, and in which other vowels
> are indicated by additional distinguishing marks of some kind
> modifying the base letter. The Ethiopic script is an abugida, as are
> the many scripts of South and Southeast Asia that are historically
> derived from the ancient Brahmi script. The term "abugida" is derived
> from the first four letters of the traditional order of the Ethiopic
> script (ALF, BET, GAML, DANT).

It's the _non_-traditional order (trad. is h l h. m), viz. the
liturgical order known from Ps 119. The order of vowels is the
traditional order of the vowels in the first four columns of the chart.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...