What is the difference between an abjad with diacritics (like Hebrew or Arabaci) and an abiguda?
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These classifications are fuzzy in practice, but
– the plain form of a letter in an abiguda usually encodes a consonant *and* vowel – a word without diacritics spells out syllables
– the plain form of a letter in an abjad encodes just a consonant – letters without diacritics are either abbreviated (you know the vowels from context and experience) or they show consonant clusters
An abjad with diacritics, such as Hebrew or Arabic, is a writing system that primarily consists of consonantal characters, with diacritical marks used to indicate vowel sounds. These diacritics are optional and often omitted in everyday writing. In contrast, an abugida, like the Devanagari script used for Sanskrit or the Ge’ez script for Amharic, is a writing system where each character represents a consonant with an inherent vowel sound, which can be modified with diacritics to represent different vowel sounds. In abugidas, the relationship between consonants and vowels is more explicit compared to abjads with diacritics.
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