Editing Alphabet (section)

== Types ==
{{Alphabet}}
The term "alphabet" is used by [[linguistics|linguists]] and [[paleographer]]s in both a wide and a narrow sense. In a broader sense, an alphabet is a ''segmental'' script at the [[phoneme]] level—that is, it has separate glyphs for individual sounds and not for larger units such as syllables or words. In the narrower sense, some scholars distinguish "true" alphabets from two other types of segmental script, [[abjad]]s, and [[abugida]]s. These three differ in how they treat vowels. Abjads have letters for consonants and leave most vowels unexpressed. Abugidas are also consonant-based but indicate vowels with [[diacritic]]s, a systematic graphic modification of the consonants.<ref>For critics of the abjad-abugida-alphabet distinction, see {{harvnb|Lehmann|2012}}, esp p. 22–27</ref> The earliest known alphabet using this sense is the [[Middle Bronze Age alphabets|Wadi el-Hol script]], believed to be an abjad. Its successor, [[Phoenician alphabet|Phoenician]], is the ancestor of modern alphabets, including [[Arabic alphabet|Arabic]], [[Greek alphabet|Greek]], [[Latin alphabet|Latin]] (via the [[Old Italic alphabet]]), [[Cyrillic]] (via the Greek alphabet), and [[Hebrew alphabet|Hebrew]] (via [[Aramaic alphabet|Aramaic]]).<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Sinaitic inscriptions |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sinaitic-inscriptions |access-date=2022-11-30}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Thamis |title=The Phoenician Alphabet & Language |url=https://www.worldhistory.org/article/17/the-phoenician-alphabet--language/ |access-date=2022-11-30 |website=World History Encyclopedia}}</ref>
[[File:Venn diagram gr la ru.svg|left|thumb|263x263px|A [[Venn diagram]] showing the [[Greek alphabet|Greek]] (left), [[Cyrillic script|Cyrillic]] (bottom) and [[Latin alphabet|Latin]] (right) alphabets, which share many of the same [[letter (alphabet)|letters]], although they have different pronunciations]]

Examples of present-day abjads are the [[Arabic script|Arabic]] and [[Hebrew script]]s;<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lipiński |first=Edward |title=Studies in Aramaic inscriptions and onomastics |publisher=Leuven University Press |year=1975 |isbn=90-6186-019-9}}</ref> true alphabets include [[Latin script|Latin]], Cyrillic, and Korean hangul; and abugidas, used to write [[tigrinya language|Tigrinya]], [[Amharic language|Amharic]], [[Hindi]], and [[Thai language|Thai]]. The [[Canadian Aboriginal syllabics]] are also an abugida, rather than a syllabary, as their name would imply, because each glyph stands for a consonant and is modified by rotation to represent the following vowel. In a true syllabary, each consonant-vowel combination gets represented by a separate glyph.<ref>Bernard Comrie, 2005, "Writing Systems", in Haspelmath et al. eds, ''The World Atlas of Language Structures'' (p 568 ff). Also Robert Bringhurst, 2004, ''The solid form of language: an essay on writing and meaning''.</ref>

All three types may be augmented with syllabic glyphs. [[Ugaritic script|Ugaritic]], for example, is essentially an abjad but has syllabic letters for {{IPA|/ʔa, ʔi, ʔu/}}<ref>Florian Coulmas, 1991, ''The writing systems of the world''</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Schniedewind |first=William M. |title=A primer on Ugaritic: language, culture, and literature |publisher=Cambridge University Press |others=Joel H. Hunt |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-511-34933-1 |location=New York}}</ref> These are the only times that vowels are indicated. [[Coptic alphabet|Coptic]] has a letter for {{IPA|/ti/}}.<ref>{{Cite web |title=КОПТСКОЕ ПИСЬМО • Большая российская энциклопедия – электронная версия |url=https://bigenc.ru/linguistics/text/2095533 |access-date=2022-11-30 |website=bigenc.ru}}</ref>{{bsn|date=September 2024}} [[Devanagari]] is typically an abugida augmented with dedicated letters for initial vowels, though some traditions use अ as a [[zero consonant]] as the graphic base for such vowels.<ref name="Indo-Aryan">{{Cite book |last1=Jain |first1=Dhanesh |title=The Indo-Aryan languages |last2=Cardona |first2=George |publisher=Routledge |year=2007 |isbn=978-1-135-79711-9 |location=London}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=A Practical Sanskrit Introductory by Charles Wikner |url=https://sanskritdocuments.org/learning_tutorial_wikner/index.html |access-date=2022-11-30 |website=sanskritdocuments.org}}</ref>

The boundaries between the three types of segmental scripts are not always clear-cut. For example, [[Sorani]] Kurdish is written in the [[Arabic script]], which, when used for other languages, is an abjad. In [[Kurdish languages|Kurdish]], writing the vowels is mandatory, and whole letters are used, so the script is a true alphabet. Other languages may use a Semitic abjad with forced vowel diacritics, effectively making them abugidas. On the other hand, the [[ʼPhags-pa script]] of the [[Mongol Empire]] was based closely on the [[Tibetan script|Tibetan abugida]], but vowel marks are written after the preceding consonant rather than as diacritic marks. Although short ''a'' is not written, as in the Indic abugidas, The source of the term "abugida", namely the [[Geʽez script]] now used for [[Amharic language|Amharic]] and [[Tigrinya language|Tigrinya]], has assimilated into their consonant modifications. It is no longer systematic and must be learned as a syllabary rather than as a segmental script. Even more extreme, the Pahlavi abjad eventually became [[logogram|logographic]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Nyberg |first=Henrik |title=A Manual of Pahlavi: Glossary |publisher=Harrassowitz |year=1964 |isbn=978-3-447-01580-6 |publication-date=December 31, 1974 |language=de}}</ref>
[[File:Ethiopic genesis.jpg|thumbnail|left|[[Geʽez script]] of [[Ethiopia]] and [[Eritrea]]]]
Thus the primary [[categorisation]] of alphabets reflects how they treat vowels. For [[tone (linguistics)|tonal languages]], further classification can be based on their treatment of tone. Though names do not yet exist to distinguish the various types. Some alphabets disregard tone entirely, especially when it does not carry a heavy functional load,<ref>{{cite book |doi=10.1109/ICICICT1.2017.8342752 |chapter=Spectral feature based automatic tonal and non-tonal language classification |title=2017 International Conference on Intelligent Computing, Instrumentation and Control Technologies (ICICICT) |date=2017 |last1=Alphonsa |first1=Alice Celin |last2=Bhanja |first2=Chuya China |last3=Laskar |first3=Azharuddin |last4=Laskar |first4=Rabul Hussain |pages=1271–1276 |isbn=978-1-5090-6106-8 }}</ref> as in [[Somali language|Somali]] and many other languages of Africa and the Americas.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Galaal |first1=Muuse Haaji Ismaaʻiil |title=Hikmaad Soomaali |last2=Andrzejewski |first2=Bogumił W. |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1956}}{{ISBN?}}</ref> Most commonly, tones are indicated by diacritics, which is how vowels are treated in abugidas, which is the case for [[Vietnamese alphabet|Vietnamese]] (a true alphabet) and [[Thai script|Thai]] (an abugida). In Thai, the tone is determined primarily by a consonant, with diacritics for disambiguation. In the [[Pollard script]], an abugida, vowels are indicated by diacritics. The placing of the diacritic relative to the consonant is modified to indicate the tone.{{sfn|Zhou|2003|p={{pn|date=November 2024}}}} More rarely, a script may have separate letters for tones, as is the case for [[Hmong alphabet|Hmong]] and [[Zhuang alphabet|Zhuang]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Clark |first1=Marybeth |title=Deixis and Anaphora and Prelinguistic Universals |series=Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications |date=2000 |pages=46–61 |publisher=University of Hawai'i Press |jstor=20000140 }}</ref> For many, regardless of whether letters or diacritics get used, the most common tone is not marked, just as the most common vowel is not marked in Indic abugidas. In [[Zhuyin]], not only is one of the tones unmarked; but there is a diacritic to indicate a lack of tone, like the [[virama]] of Indic.{{fact|date=November 2024}}