abugida

Noun. (linguistics) A writing system, similar to a syllabary, in which each symbol represents a consonant with a particular vowel. Some languages that use abugidas are Amharic, Hindi, Burmese, Cree and Ojibwe (Canadian Aboriginal syllabics). An abugida is a kind of syllabary in which vowel is changed by modifying the base consonant symbol, so that all the forms that represent a given consonant plus each vowel resemble one other.

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This entry was last updated on RefTopia from its source on 3/20/2012.