Richard Wordingham wrote:

>
> --- 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.

If the letters represent consonants or vowels, then it's an alphabet.

Presumably your Lao is like vocalized Hebrew/Arabic/Syriac -- or better,
Yiddish, where the "vocalizations" are not optional and are in fact
separate letters?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...