Abjad


An abjad is a type of writing system in which each symbol or glyph stands for a consonant, in effect leaving it to readers to infer or otherwise supply an appropriate vowel. So-called impure abjads represent vowels with either optional diacritics, a limited number of distinct vowel glyphs, or both. The name abjad is based on the Arabic alphabet's first four letters — corresponding to a, b, j, d — to replace the more common terms "consonantary" and "consonantal alphabet", in describing the family of scripts classified as "West Semitic."

Etymology

The name "abjad" is derived from pronouncing the first letters of the Arabic alphabet order, in its original order. The ordering of Arabic letters used to match that of the older Phoenician, Hebrew and Semitic proto-alphabets: specifically, aleph, bet, gimel, dalet.

Terminology

According to the formulations of Peter T. Daniels, abjads differ from alphabets in that only consonants, not vowels, are represented among the basic graphemes. Abjads differ from abugidas, another category defined by Daniels, in that in abjads, the vowel sound is implied by phonology, and where vowel marks exist for the system, such as nikkud for Hebrew and ḥarakāt for Arabic, their use is optional and not the dominant form. Abugidas mark all vowels with a diacritic, a minor attachment to the letter, or a standalone glyph. Some abugidas use a special symbol to suppress the inherent vowel so that the consonant alone can be properly represented. In a syllabary, a grapheme denotes a complete syllable, that is, either a lone vowel sound or a combination of a vowel sound with one or more consonant sounds.
The antagonism of abjad versus alphabet, as it was formulated by Daniels, has been rejected by some other scholars because abjad is also used as a term not only for the Arabic numeral system but, which is most important in terms of historical grammatology, also as term for the alphabetic device of ancient Northwest Semitic scripts in opposition to the 'south Arabian' order. This caused fatal effects on terminology in general and especially in Semitic philology. Also, it suggests that consonantal alphabets, in opposition to, for instance, the Greek alphabet, were not yet true alphabets and not yet entirely complete, lacking something important to be a fully working script system. It has also been objected that, as a set of letters, an alphabet is not the mirror of what should be there in a language from a phonological point of view; rather, it is the data stock of what provides maximum efficiency with least effort from a semantic point of view.

Origins

The first abjad to gain widespread usage was the Phoenician abjad. Unlike other contemporary scripts, such as cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Phoenician script consisted of only a few dozen symbols. This made the script easy to learn, and seafaring Phoenician merchants took the script throughout the then-known world.
The Phoenician abjad was a radical simplification of phonetic writing, since hieroglyphics required the writer to pick a hieroglyph starting with the same sound that the writer wanted to write in order to write phonetically, much as man'yōgana was used to represent Japanese phonetically before the invention of kana.
Phoenician gave rise to a number of new writing systems, including the Greek alphabet and Aramaic, a widely used abjad. The Greek alphabet evolved into the modern western alphabets, such as Latin and Cyrillic, while Aramaic became the ancestor of many modern abjads and abugidas of Asia.

Impure abjads

Impure abjads have characters for some vowels, optional vowel diacritics, or both. The term pure abjad refers to scripts entirely lacking in vowel indicators. However, most modern abjads, such as Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Pahlavi, are "impure" abjadsthat is, they also contain symbols for some of the vowel phonemes, although the said non-diacritic vowel letters are also used to write certain consonants, particularly approximants that sound similar to long vowels. A "pure" abjad is exemplified by very early forms of ancient Phoenician, though at some point it and most of the contemporary Semitic abjads had begun to overload a few of the consonant symbols with a secondary function as vowel markers, called matres lectionis. This practice was at first rare and limited in scope but became increasingly common and more developed in later times.

Addition of vowels

In the 9th century BC the Greeks adapted the Phoenician script for use in their own language. The phonetic structure of the Greek language created too many ambiguities when vowels went unrepresented, so the script was modified. They did not need letters for the guttural sounds represented by aleph, he, heth or ayin, so these symbols were assigned vocalic values. The letters waw and yod were also adapted into vowel signs; along with he, these were already used as matres lectionis in Phoenician. The major innovation of Greek was to dedicate these symbols exclusively and unambiguously to vowel sounds that could be combined arbitrarily with consonants.
Abugidas developed along a slightly different route. The basic consonantal symbol was considered to have an inherent "a" vowel sound. Hooks or short lines attached to various parts of the basic letter modify the vowel. In this way, the South Arabian alphabet evolved into the Ge'ez alphabet between the 5th century BC and the 5th century AD. Similarly, around the 3rd century BC, the Brāhmī script developed.
The other major family of abugidas, Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, was initially developed in the 1840s by missionary and linguist James Evans for the Cree and Ojibwe languages. Evans used features of Devanagari script and Pitman shorthand to create his initial abugida. Later in the 19th century, other missionaries adapted Evans' system to other Canadian aboriginal languages. Canadian syllabics differ from other abugidas in that the vowel is indicated by rotation of the consonantal symbol, with each vowel having a consistent orientation.

Abjads and the structure of Semitic languages

The abjad form of writing is well-adapted to the morphological structure of the Semitic languages it was developed to write. This is because words in Semitic languages are formed from a root consisting of three consonants, the vowels being used to indicate inflectional or derived forms. For instance, according to Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, from the Arabic root ذ ب ح Dh-B-Ḥ can be derived the forms ذَبَحَ dhabaḥa, ذَبَحْتَ dhabaḥta, يُذَبِّحُ yudhabbiḥu, and مَذْبَح madhbaḥ. In most cases, the absence of full glyphs for vowels makes the common root clearer, allowing readers to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words from familiar roots and improving word recognition while reading for practiced readers.
By contrast, the Arabic and Hebrew scripts sometimes perform the role of true alphabets rather than abjads when used to write certain Indo-European languages, including Kurdish, Bosnian, and Yiddish.

Comparative chart of Abjads, extinct and extant

NameIn useCursiveDirection# of lettersMatres lectionisArea of originUsed byLanguagesTime period Influenced byWriting systems influenced
Syriacyesyesright-left22 consonants3Middle EastChurch of the East, Syrian ChurchAramaic, Syriac, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic~ 100 BCEAramaicNabatean, Palmyran, Mandaic, Parthian, Pahlavi, Sogdian, Avestan and Manichean
Hebrewyesas a secondary scriptright-left22 consonants + 5 final letters4Middle EastIsraelis, Jewish diaspora communities, Second Temple JudeaHebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Aramaic2nd century BCEPaleo-Hebrew, Early Aramaic
Arabicyesyesright-left283Middle East and North AfricaOver 400 million peopleArabic, Bosnian, Kashmiri, Malay, Persian, Pashto, Uyghur, Kurdish, Urdu, many others512 CENabataean Aramaic
Aramaic nonoright-left223Middle EastAchaemenid, Persian, Babylonian, and Assyrian empiresImperial Aramaic, Hebrew~ 500 BCEPhoenicianLate Hebrew, Nabataean, Syriac
Aramaic nonoright-left22noneMiddle EastVarious Semitic Peoples~ 1000-900 BCE PhoenicianHebrew, Imperial Aramaic.
Nabataeannonoright-left22noneMiddle EastNabataean KingdomNabataean200 BCEAramaicArabic
Middle Persian, nonoright-left223Middle EastSassanian EmpirePahlavi, Middle PersianAramaicPsalter, Avestan
Psalter Pahlavinoyesright-left21yesNorthwestern China Persian Script for Paper Writing~ 400 CESyriac
Phoeniciannonoright-left, boustrophedon22noneByblosCanaanitesPhoenician, Punic, Hebrew~ 1000-1500 BCEProto-Canaanite AlphabetPunic, Greek, Etruscan, Latin, Arabic and Hebrew
Parthiannonoright-left22yesParthia Parthian & Sassanian periods of Persian EmpireParthian~ 200 BCEAramaic
Sabaeannonoright-left, boustrophedon29noneSouthern Arabia Southern ArabiansSabaean~ 500 BCEByblosEthiopic
Punicnonoright-left22noneCarthage, North Africa, MediterraneanPunic CulturePunic, Neo-PunicPhoenician
Proto-Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanitenonoleft-right24noneEgypt, Sinai, CanaanCanaanitesCanaanite~ 1900-1700 BCEIn conjunction with Egyptian Hieroglyphs Phoenician, Hebrew
Ugariticnoyesleft-right30none, 3 characters for gs+vowelUgarit UgaritesUgaritic, Hurrian~ 1400 BCEProto-Sinaitic
South Arabiannoyes Boustrophedon29yesSouth-Arabia D'mt KingdomAmharic, Tigrinya, Tigre, Semitic, Cushitic, Nilo-Saharan 900 BCE Proto-SinaiticGe'ez
Sogdiannono right-left, left-right 203parts of China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, PakistanBuddhists, ManichaensSogdian~ 400 CESyriacOld Uyghur alphabet
Samaritanyes noright-left22noneMesopotamia or Levant Samaritans Samaritan Aramaic, Samaritan Hebrew~ 100-0 BCEPaleo-Hebrew Alphabet
Tifinaghyesnobottom-top, right-left, left-right,23yesNorth AfricaBerbersBerber languages2nd millennium BCPhoenician, Arabic