Re: VMs: Stroke harmony. Was: Has anyone been down this route before?

[Pierre Abbat <phma@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sunday 05 September 2004 20:33, Dennis S. wrote:
>    Incidentally, I understand that the Semitic systems like Hebrew or
> Arabic which only write consonant phonemes (I forget John Koontz' excellent
> term) are considered syllabaries.  Is this correct?

No. They are abjads. A system in which vowels modify consonant signs is called 
an abugida; examples include Ethiopian, Nagari, Cree, and Pollard (which is 
used for Miao - and btw I did find some 50k of Hmong somewhere). A syllabary 
is a system of irreducible syllabic characters, such as Cherokee and Japanese 
kana (kana have modifiers indicating voicing, so "dzu" looks like "tsu" with 
a mark added, but still it looks nothing like "ta" or "bu").

>    Well, is a whole note a monotone?  ;-)

"I'm feeling crotchety", said Tom in a quavering voice.

phma
-- 
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa
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