Comment by PittleyDunkin
16 hours ago
> This is a modern distinction.
Well, the actual scripts were distinguished semantically all along, and "alphabet" is also a word newer than the scripts in question. We should probably just use the words that make most sense to modern english speakers rather than... whomever you're referring to. Or just use "phonetic script" or something.
The word "alphabet" has been used at least since the second century AD (e.g. by Tertullian), but it is composed from the names of the first 2 letters of the Phoenician alphabet, names that must be at least 3 millennia old.
Without additional conventions, "alphabet" would have been the appropriate name for any writing systems derived from the Phoenician alphabet, which include the majority of the writing systems based on alphabets, abjads or abugidas. The few other such writing systems, which have not passed through the Phoenician alphabet, are those derived from the Ancient South Arabian script, which for some reason had a different alphabetic order of the letters than the Northern Semitic alphabets, so it did not start with Alep and Bet.
Funny that the word abugida is itself taken from the Amharic word for the Northern Semitic letter ordering—as you say, the traditional order for ፊደል goes ሀለሐመ…
While the greek letter names are derived from phoenician (e.g. aleph/alef/alep and bet), my understanding is that the term was first coined in reference to the greek script (e.g. alpha + bet-). It does, however, seem increasingly silly to look to etymology to argue for why we should use the terms as I did when actual evidence as to the origin seems extremely sketchy at best and may not be relevant to our current needs.
I just think it's useful to distinguish consonantal scripts from those with full vowel inclusion. Why not use alphabet/abjad for this? There's already a broad understanding of this meaning; why not lean into it?
I'll also admit this gets more complicated when I see people referring to an "abjad alphabet", but this leaves us with no way to describe an alphabet with consonants and vowels as opposed to a consonantal one.