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Syllabic Writing
Syllabic alphabets, alphasyllabaries or abugidas consist of symbols for consonants and vowels. The consonants each have
an inherent vowel which can be changed to another vowel or muted by means of diacritics. Vowels can also be written with
separate letters when they occur at the beginning of a word or on their own. When two or more consonants occur together,
special conjunct symbols are often used which add the essential parts of first letter or letters in the sequence to the final letter.
The illustration on the right shows how some of the vowel diacritics (in red) are used in the Devanagari alphabet, and also
shows a number of conjunct consonants. These phonetic signs are Syllabograms, meaning that they represent syllables rather
than individual sound. A few non-phonetic are used for numbers, punctuation, and commonly used words.
Bengali, Brahmi, Buginese, Burmese, Byblos, Cherokee, Cree, Cypriot, Devanagari, Dhivehi, Ethiopic, Grantha, Gujarati,
Gupta, Gurmukhi, Inuktitut, Javanese, Kadamba, Kalinga, Kannada, Kashmiri, Kawi, Kharosthi, Khmer, Landa, Lao,
Lepcha, Malayalam, Mangyan, Meithei Mayek, Meroïtic, Modi, Nagari, Old Persian, Old Kannada, Oriya, Rejang, Sarada.
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