Abugida vs. Alphabet — What's the Difference?

An abugida ( (listen), from Ge'ez: አቡጊዳ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is secondary. This contrasts with a full alphabet, in which vowels have status equal to consonants, and with an abjad, in which vowel marking is absent, partial, or optional (although in less formal contexts, all three types of script may be termed alphabets).

An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written symbols or graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllable, for instance, and logographic systems use characters to represent words, morphemes, or other semantic units.The first fully phonemic script, the Proto-Canaanite script, later known as the Phoenician alphabet, is considered to be the first alphabet, and is the ancestor of most modern alphabets, including Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and possibly Brahmic.

(linguistics) A kind of syllabary (syllabic alphabet) in which a symbol or glyph representing a syllable contains parts representing a vowel and a consonant, such that symbols for syllables not including the default vowel are generated by adding a common notation to indicate the vowel that it does include.

The letters of a language, arranged in the order fixed by custom.

(linguistics) A kind of syllabary (syllabic alphabet) in which a symbol or glyph representing a syllable contains parts representing a vowel and a consonant, typically such that symbols for different syllables are generated by adding, altering or removing the vowel portion, often by applying a diacritic to a stable consonant symbol.

A system of characters or symbols representing sounds or things.

A set of basic parts or elements

The set of letters used when writing in a language.

A writing system in which letters represent phonemes. Contrast e.g. logography, a writing system in which each character represents a word, and syllabary, in which each character represents a syllable.

A writing system in which there are letters for the consonant and vowel phonemes. Contrast e.g. abjad.

(computer science) A typically finite set of distinguishable symbols.

An individual letter of an alphabet; an alphabetic character.

The simplest rudiments; elements.

An agent of the FBI, the CIA, or another such government agency.

(rare) To designate by the letters of the alphabet; to arrange alphabetically.

The letters of a language arranged in the customary order; the series of letters or signs which form the elements of written language.

The simplest rudiments; elements.

To designate by the letters of the alphabet; to arrange alphabetically.

A character set that includes letters and is used to write a language

The elementary stages of any subject (usually plural);