2018-02-16 1:59 GMT+01:00 Richard Wordingham via Unicode < unicode@unicode.org>:
> On Wed, 14 Feb 2018 21:49:57 +0100 > Philippe Verdy via Unicode <unicode@unicode.org> wrote: > > > The concept of vowels as distinctive letters came later, even the > > letter A was initially a representation of a glottal stop consonnant, > > sometimes mute, only written to indicate a word that did not start by > > a consonnant in their first syllable, letter. This has survived today > > in abjads and abugidas where vowels became optional diacritics, but > > that evolved as plain diacritics in Indic abugidas. > > OK. > > > The situation is even more complex because clusters of consonnants > > were also represented in early vowel-less alphabets to represent full > > syllables (this has formed the base of todays syllabaries when only > > some glyph variants of the base consonnant was introduced to > > distinguish their vocalization; > > The only syllabary where what you say might be true is the Ethiopic > syllabary, and I have grave doubts as to that case. > > I hope you are aware that most syllabaries do not derive from > alphabets, abjads or abugidas. > I said the opposite: the alphabets, abjads, abugidas and today's full syllabaries derive from early simplified syllabaries, themselves derived from simplified pictograms (ideograms becoming phonograms).
