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An abjad is a type of Writing System in which there is one symbol per Consonant al Phoneme , sometimes also called a '''consonantary'''. Abjads differ from Alphabet s, in that in an abjad, each basic Grapheme represents a consonant, although Vowel s may be indicated by Vowel Mark s on the basic graphemes. An alphabet has basic graphemes for both consonants and vowels. Abjads also differ from Abugida s. In an abjad, each basic grapheme represents only a consonant. In an abugida, each basic grapheme represents a syllable consisting of a consonant and a vowel; the same consonant with a different vowel -- or with no vowel -- is represented by a modified or marked form of the same basic grapheme. ETYMOLOGY The system takes its name from the first nonsense 'word' of the mnemonic sequence for the letters of the Arabic Alphabet in the older Abjadi Order . It has been suggested that the word 'Abjad' may have earlier roots in Phoenician or Ugaritic . ORIGINS All known abjads belong to the Semitic Family Of Scripts , and derive from the Proto-Sinaitic Alphabet , the earliest known abjad, derived from Egyptian Hieroglyphs , dated to ca. 1500 BC . The development of an abjad was a significant simplification compared to the earlier Syllabaries , with the number of glyphs to be learned reduced by about 80%, at the cost of increased ambiguity because of the missing vowels (the step of adding back independent vowel signs was to be reserved for the Greeks about seven centuries later). IMPURE ABJADS "Impure" abjads (such as Arabic) may have characters for some vowels as well (called ''matres lectionis'', 'mothers of reading', singular Mater Lectionis ), or optional vowel diacritics, or both; however, the term's originator, Peter T. Daniels , insists that it should be applied only to scripts entirely lacking in vowel indicators, thus excluding Arabic , Hebrew , and Syriac . Impure abjads develop when, due to period, the vowel use of ו was expanded to places where no consonant ever existed. Addition of vowels Many scripts derived from abjads have been extended with vowel symbols to become full Alphabet s. This has mostly happened when the script was adapted to a non-Semitic language, the most famous case being the derivation of the Greek Alphabet from the Phoenician abjad. The Greeks did not need the letters for the Guttural (א, ה, ח, ע) and Co-articulated (צ, ק) consonants. They dropped some of them and turned others into vowels. In other cases, the vowel signs come in the form of little points or hooks attached to the consonant letters, producing an Abugida such as the system of writing Amharic (written using the Ge'ez alphabet, which was formerly an abjad before a vocalization occurred sometime after the 5th century BCE but before the 4th century CE). RELATED CONCEPTS Surprisingly, many non-Semitic languages such as English can be written without vowels and read with little difficulty. For example, the previous sentence could be written ''Srprsngly, mny nn-Smtc lnggs sch `s `nglsh cn b wrttn wtht vwls `nd rd wth lttl dffclty.'' This fact can be used to semi-bowdlerise offensive language, a practice known as Disemvoweling . Some usages of 1337 Speak drop vowels, especially for small words. SEE ALSO REFERENCES
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