--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...> wrote:

> "Akshara" is, essentially, Sanskrit for 'letter'.

Which fact has bothered me. I have had the uncomfortable feeling that
we are stretching the term a little too far.

Such terms can have a lot of overlap - I often encounter the use of
the word 'alphabet' by non-native English speakers to mean 'letter'.

Incidentally, you didn't answer the implicit question of what an
abugida becomes if it ceases to have inherent vowels. (It's possible
you answered it many, many months ago and I have forgotten the
answer.) I gave the example of Lao, and I have previously mentioned a
special way of writing Pali in Thai script without the use of inherent
vowels. In both these (closely related) cases the vowel marks may be
before, above, below or after the vowel, which is what strikes me as
the most characteristic feature of the family of Indic scripts.

Richard.