Talk:Abjad

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Contents

[edit] Connections with numbers

I have moved the following. In all cases that I have seen, those systems are decimal, they are just not "digital". Greek numbers assigned letters values of 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,20,30,40,50, &c. Looks pretty decimal to me. They just indicate the power of ten by using a different symbol instead of making us figure it out by the column:

Modern abjads have also been used for isopsephy, a system of assigning numeric values to individual letters. Before the development of the decimal number system, this was one of the regular systems for writing numbers. In some languages, the relationship between words and numbers created by this system has led to poetic and mystical usages.



Bold text

 This article has been reviewed by the Version 1.0 Editorial Team.
Version 0.7
 This article has been selected for Version 0.7 and subsequent release versions of Wikipedia.
Chinese character "Book" This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Writing systems, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to writing systems on Wikipedia. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project’s talk page.
Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the Project’s quality scale.
Top This article has been rated as top-importance on the Project’s importance scale.

...in an abjad, each basic grapheme represents a consonant, although vowels may be indicated by marks on the basic graphemes.... In an abjad, each basic grapheme represents only a consonant.

This is confusing, and it may be owing to confusion over the terms abjad vs. abugida in the field, but this article's opening suggests that graphemes in an abjad may have marks indicating vowels... but also says that an abjad is not an abugida because an abugida may have marks indicating vowels. I'm not the person to do it, but this paragraph needs to be clarified. Glenford 22:30, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

An abjad is a type of writing system where there is one symbol per character (as in an alphabet).

This incorporates a distinction between a symbol and a character that is completely lost on me. When is a symbol not a character? When is a character not a symbol? If such things as vowel points in Semitic writing systems are symbols but not characters, which I guess is what the sentence means, it would seem to me that this definition would exclude, say, the Aramaic alphabet, while later in the article it seems to be at least implicitly included. --Calieber 15:47, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)

See also Bahá'í, where abjad is a numerological system.

Abjad is not actually mentioned on the Bahá'í page. --Mr2001 13:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't think that it something specific to Bahá'í, it seems to be numerological system based on the arabic letters. From german Wikipedia [1]:

  • ابجد – abdschad: 1–2–3–4
  • هوز – hawwaz: 5–6–7
  • حطى – hutti: 8–9–10
  • كلمن – kalaman: 20–30–40–50
  • سعفص – sa'fas: 60–70–80–90
  • قرشت – qaraschat: 100–200–300–400
  • ثخذ – thachidh: 500–600–700
  • ضظغ – dazagh: 800–900–1000

Somebody in the know should correct this, I'm not sure enough to do it myself.

Pjacobi 14:29, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Objections to Daniels's definition

This paragraph should be removed: "Daniels terms look at the external features of these writings, but ignore their historical membership in the large family of West Semitic writings. Most prefer to regard the West Semitic writings as an odd syllabary in which the consonant is specified, but the vowel remains implied." Who are the "most"? There is no citation, and with good reason: it isn't true. The view of West Semitic systems as "odd syllabaries" has been conclusively refuted. Yes, they derived originally from the Egyptian system, but they work very differently from the Egyptian, which is why they have a different name. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.112.64.79 (talk) 02:20, 7 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Strange link

I removed the folowing link from the article. It doesn't make any sense to me. Please explain what this is about before adding links, which need exaplanation.

Pjacobi 09:32, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Re: strange link

On Abjad (external link)

Dear Pjacobi:

it is an introduction on how the history of abjad develops, the article tracks the Arabic / Farsi lineage of Abjad (as there are many forms of Abjad) and it discusses how Arabic Abjad is devided into 9 powers (how zero is used as place holder) instead of Kaballah which gains power from 10. the tool of analysis is 'numogram' which is another kabbalistic / Abjad form of Tree of Life except as numogram is constituted by syzygies (twin numbers) whose sum must be equal to 9 (the 9 is the ABJAD power) instead of 10 (see for example: [2]). other topics of discissions in that article about Abjad is [1] why Arabic Abjad is an exception and takes its power from 9 and letter ghain or its last letter is equal to 1000 (what does 1000 mean in the occult and mathematical numerology of Arabic Abjad?) [2] connection of numerology and especially Abjad with Philosophy of Deleuze and Gauttari's numeracy or numbering numbers [3] in the wake of numerous occult and numerology stuff on War on Terror on the net, the article depicts why Kaballah and Abjad are used frequently. [4] interesting properties of Abjad when it is applied (i.e. installed) to the Numogram (aka Decimal Labyrinth) and Tree of Life. The article is not mine but i thought it is a good text to show how Abjad has developed systematically and enters to occult and philosophy.

pv000

I still find the link confusing, taking for instance a snippet like this:

This is why ABJADs are perfectly applicable to ultra-complex dynamic platforms (such as warmachines and their plane of tacticity), digraming a numeracy “immanenet to thier assemblges” and soft grids of movement (read Nick’s post). However, there is one problem, that certain warmachines cannot be diagramed exclusively by strictly semitic-based, vowelless-oriented systems of numeracy as in the case of techno-capitalist Warmachines running on WoTerror. Here Arabic Abjad is the best numbering platform (let aside the polarity of Farsi / Arabic cultures in WoTerror) as it has characters for some vowels as well; creatively letting some problematic but also fundamentally crucial numbering entities and functions enter in.

The ancestry tree of writing systems is nice, but I think a similiar one is already included in one of the other writing system articles, I'm too stupid to fint it right now. If not it needs being drawed and included.
The link would make more sense, if the numerology behind this would have an overview treatmeant in the Wikipedia, either here, or in Numerology or in a separate article Abjad numerology.
pv000, if you are interested in this, but not confident enought to start a new article right now, I suggest writing a draft in your user space, e.g. User:pv000/Abjad numerology (draft).
Pjacobi 18:56, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)


Yes, you are right; it seems the article has some references to other discussions. The subject of 'the warmachine and numerology' refers to the discussion of warmachines and smoothspace in A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze and Guattari) and also this article on why numerologic systems (Abjads) do not use fuzzy numbers. [3]

qoute from that article: "To be crude, there is a 3rd Army, not a 3.14th Army or a Pi Army etc. - a fact holding for every compositional level of the war machine in question. Making culture operate as a war machine requires the disintegration of all semiotics into numbers and a complementary numerical simplification. (Both aspects essential to 'numerization'). The currencies - or concrete semiotics - of commercial war machines, share these characteristics of digital 'granularity' and pre-eminence of modularity (typically on a decimal base) or the compositional aspect of number."

thanks, i will start to write a draft, i'll see if the writers of Hyperstition who are experts (former professors or philosophers) can join us in building up wikipedia or helping me to write this article.

pv000

[edit] Baha'e religion and Abjad

Dear Pjacobi,

Yes although Abjad is not peculiar to Baha'ie but only two sects (both considered as renegades by Sunnies and Shias) are adept in using Abjad (i.e. Arabic / Farsi Abjad); first 'Horoofi' (letters) sect founded by Mirza Fazlollah-e Astar'abadi and then Bahai'e. They are both regarded as two religions or sects which have developed Abjad not as a simple numerological system but a religion of numbers or what Deleuze and Gauttari suggest as "numbering numbers" which are entities (entity as event) rather than mere representations.

pv000

[edit] Link suggestions

An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the Abjad article, and they have been placed on this page for your convenience.
Tip: Some people find it helpful if these suggestions are shown on this talk page, rather than on another page. To do this, just add {{User:LinkBot/suggestions/Abjad}} to this page. — LinkBot 10:33, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Abjad (linguistics) vs. Abjad order

It doesn't make sense to me to have abjad, the name of a kind of writing system, and abjad, the name of a particular order of the Arabic alphabet, in the same article.

I think this should be split into two articles, Abjad (linguistics) and Abjad order. Or alternatively Abjad order should be in the Arabic alphabet article. --Macrakis 21:24, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

It seems you are suggesting a split because "alphabet" and "alphabetical order" are two concepts. However, it makes sense to me to make a cursory reference to the abjad sequencing in the collation article. I put the three examples under abjad because the word abjad comes from them, and because it is interesting that there are variations in the later part of the sequence. The Arabic alphabet article is getting too long as it is - I don't think moving this information there would be a wise move. Cbdorsett 22:16, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hebrew abjad?

I am going to suggest deletion of the new addition about a "single-word" pronunciation of the Hebrew alphabet. It sounds contrived to me. Unless the contributor can provide some reference to verify that this sequence actually exists somewhere in literature, I'm going to ax it. Cbdorsett 22:12, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

The text was:

The actual Hebrew sequence, as may be pronounced as a single word due to the unnecessity of vowels in the Hebrew language, is as follows:

  • abgada[h]v[w]azhatik[kh]alamansapatzqareshet

I've removed this because as it stood, it had no apparent relation to the surrounding text, or indeed to the article, since the material on abjadi order was moved elsewhere; this was apparently overlooked at the time. —Charles P. (Mirv) 22:44, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Abjad Definition from Daniels and Bright

The World's Writing Systems", Peter T. Daniels & William Bright, general editors, OUP, 1996. Section 1, "The Study of Writing Systems", written by Peter T. Daniels.

In a consonantary, here called an abjad as a parallel to "alphabet" (the word is formed from the first letters of the most widespread example, the Arabic script, in their historic order . . . ), the characters denote consonants (only).

An abugida is a full syllabary. --FourthAve 20:58, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

An abugida is both a full syllabary and a full alphabet in many respects. A pure abugida makes available characters for every syllable in the language, so it can be called a syllabary. However, these characters are composites of characters for consonants and vowels, for all of which there are such characters (except for the 'inherent vowel'), so it can also be called an alphabet that just combines the consonant and vowel characters as syllabic characters. True, abugidas differ systematically from pure alphabets in one respect, namely that a lone consonant character denotes not just that consonant but a syllable where it is followed by the inherent vowel, whatever it is in that abugida, and to silence the vowel an extra character is needed. But you can conceive of a writing system which is just like a normal alphabet but where a consonant not followed by a vowel would be interpreted as having a default (inherent) vowel after it, and to silence it you would need an extra character. (Like when writing the English word 'mate' you would write mat if e were the inherent vowel, and to write 'mat' you would write mat* or something along those lines). Would you call that an abugida or an alphabet? Because the characters for consonants and vowels would be equal and separate, it would probably be called a special kind of alphabet.
Also, one characteristic of prototypical syllabaries is that for every kind of consonant-vowel combination there is a separate, independent character, whereas in abugidas syllables with the same consonant share the character for that consonant and similarly for the vowels. Usually you wouldn't call a system a syllabary if the parts of the syllables can be distinguished, but once again, cases in between could be imagined and probably can be found, too.
What I'm saying is that there are no clear-cut categories for the writing systems, but rather a continuum with focal points that we call alphabet, syllabary, abugida (alphasyllabary), abjad (consonantary), logographic system, etc. Most systems have properties of many of these prototypical cases, which are still useful for describing their nature. -Oghmoir 14:54, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Primary meaning

It's semi-annoying that the more common and long-established meaning of the word Abjad has been shuffled off to a sub-section of the "Arabic Alphabet" article, while the Abjad article is now devoted to a recent scholarly neologism. Shouldn't there at least be a disambiguation page? AnonMoos 04:33, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

yes, make this a disambiguation page, and have the article on abjadi order at abjadi order (and this article at abjad (linguistics) or some such. 85.232.169.134 19:37, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation

Given that it's a neologism, could the pronunciation be included. Is it /ˈæbdʒæd/? Gailtb 04:33, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

My IPA isn't the best but it should be more along the lines of /ˈabdʒad/. --LakeHMM 03:58, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tet and theta

Hebrew tet is homologous to greek theta. It wasn't removed or turned into a vowel. Zargulon 21:42, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] request for clarification of lead sentence in section "Impure Abjads"

The lead sentence in the section "Impure Abjads" is confusing, because in the clause after the semi-colon a reference is made to "the term". The problem for me is that in the previous clause there were two terms introduced: one is "Impure Abjads", which I assume is the term that is to be defined in this section; and the term "mater lectionis" together with its plural variant "matres lectionis". Here is the sentence as it now stands:

"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.

My question is: does the phrase "the term" after the semi-colon refer to "impure abjads", "abjads", or "mater lectionis"? And my requests are: 1) yes, I know that I could go look up Peter T. Daniels to research which term he originated, but couldn't whoever wrote this -- presumably someone expert in matters linguistic -- write a better sentence that is clear enough not require the reader to do further research simply to understand the point of the sentence?; and 2) could someone who knows about Daniels and abjads and matres lectionis please rewrite this sentence? I would if I felt sure I understood what the gist of it was, but I don't, so I won't. Thanks for any help. Dveej 14:11, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Connections to numbers

I just neatened up this section a bit, but I still don't know if it belongs in this article. Any thoughts? If you think it doesn't, feel free to take it out. --LakeHMM 01:27, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "As with all syllabaries"?

Right now the second lead paragraph begins "As with all syllabary-like forms, abjads differ from alphabets in that only the consonants, not vowels, are represented in the basic graphemes." Surely this is a misrepresentation of syllabaries? I thought syllabaries are characterized by using a symbol for each syllable, not necessarily by hiding vowel sounds. Many syllabaries contain different symbols with the same consonant sound but different vowel sounds (e.g. na, ni, nu, ne, no in Japanese hiragana), and also different symbols with the same vowel sound but different consonant sounds (e.g. ka, sa, na, ha... in hiragana). Thus each symbol represents the syllable, not just the consonant (or vowel). Am I wrong, or should the lead be corrected? --mglg(talk) 20:02, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Since nobody voiced a differing opinion, I will correct the lead regarding syllabaries. -- mglg(talk) 21:05, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 7-8-6

This topic does not belong here, but to Numerology. The topic is treated here: 786 (number)#In religion. Maybe a link in Abjad numerals would be appropriate.  Andreas  (T) 14:44, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Waw

Waw (or Vav) was originally pronounced [w] as in wood, see Hebrew alphabet#Vowels and consonants in Ancient Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew#Phonology. The [v] pronunciation is modern. The [w] pronunciation is still common among Teimanim and some Mizrahim, see Hebrew phonology.  Andreas  (T) 14:27, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I support the deletion by User:Asthenization-Creator but not for the reason given. Nobody knows how Hebrew was pronounced 2000 years ago. Cbdorsett 15:00, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup issues - Feb 2007

  • Header: "Some abjads in use are Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Persian, and Avestan."
This is incorrect. Modern Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic and Persian are all "impure" abjads because they all have symbols which are used to represent vowels, although not all vowels are represented in these modern systems. According to our own article Avestan alphabet, there were quite a few vowel symbols in that system as well. As far as I know, the only "true" abjad is the ancient Phoenician, and maybe Hebrew with the pre-1945 spelling.
  • Header: "in abjads the vowel sound is implied by phonology"
The vowel sound is not implied at all. It is simply not there. There are plenty of graphemes that have two or more correct pronunciations. The reader can often choose the correct pronunciation based on knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary of the language. Phonology has nothing to do with it.
  • Header: "(In an abugida, the vowel sounds are defined with the grapheme, and any modifications from the standard vowel sound, including no vowel sound, are represented by vowel marks.)"
I think this paragraph needs to be neatened up. It seems to be about contrasting "abjads" with other types of writing systems. The sentences ought to be roughly parallel.
  • Header: "The terms abjad and abugida appear to be the inventions of Peter T. Daniels, as explained in his book (with William Bright) The World's Writing Systems (Oxford, 1996). They have not won wide acceptance."
Personally, I like the neatness and compactness of these two terms. However, if they truly have not been widely accepted, then we should seriously consider "demoting" them to footnotes and renaming the respective articles accordingly. "Consonantary" works for abjad - I don't have any ideas for abugida. An earlier editor complained on this talk page that "abjad" has had an established meaning for centuries, something which Wikipedia now has on part of the Arabic alphabet page (Arabic_alphabet#Abjad.C4.AB_order)
I have seen these terms in wide use for years in both academic circles and the internet. It may be true that the terms are the invention of a single researcher, but so are many other scientific terms. As I see it, the terms are becoming established, so I don't see any problem other than the statement in question. -Oghmoir 15:03, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Addition: Granted, a perfectly good optional term for abugida is alphasyllabary. -Oghmoir 21:21, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Etymology: "It has been suggested that the word Abjad may have earlier roots in Phoenician or Ugaritic."
Wow. If anything needs a {{fact}} tag, it's this.
  • 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 derivation of Proto-Sinaitic is a hypothesis. This assertion needs a citation.
  • Origins: "The development of an abjad was a significant simplification compared to the earlier syllabaries"
This seems to imply that the Proto-Sinaitic abjad was derived from a syllabary, which is not true, even under the hypothesis which suggests it came from Egyptian hieroglyphs. The sentence needs to be reworked. The rest of the paragraph could use some copyediting as well.
  • Impure abjads: " "Impure" abjads (such as Arabic and Hebrew) 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 originator of the term abjad, Peter T. Daniels, insists that it should be applied only to scripts entirely lacking in vowel indicators, thus excluding Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac."
This paragraph actually contradicts the rest of the article. An impure abjad has symbols for some of the vowels, or symbols which are sometimes used for vowels. If mater lectionis has any place in this article at all, it needs to be explained better. The term is the singular, so it should be the lead, and the plural should be mentioned afterwards (opposite to the current arrangement). Nobody cares what Peter Daniels insists. If he has defined a term and that term is relevant to the article, we should have his actual definition. This section is about impure abjads as defined by him. This is the location to provide more information about why Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac fall into this category.
  • Impure abjads: "Impure abjads develop when, due to phonetic change, a previous consonant or diphthong becomes a vowel."
Wait a minute. If an abjad has no representation for vowels, then by definition, it has no representation for diphthongs either. The sentence is wrong. Impure abjads develop when a consonantal symbol acquires a dual purpose, representing both a consonant and a vowel (or diphthong).
  • Impure abjads: "For example, the Hebrew word הורישׁ probably underwent the following pronunciation change: *hawriʃ → *howriʃ → horiʃ. The ו, which was originally the consonant w, became the vowel o. Later, probably in the Second Temple period, the vowel use of ו was expanded to places where no consonant ever existed."
Sorry, I don't buy this. Someone deleted it yesterday, and the proponent put it back. Old (pre-1945) Hebrew orthography had one set of vowels which were represented only by Nikkud points, and another (the "long" vowels) which sat on an actual letter, such as vav or yud. I don't know anything about the Second Temple period and the developments in Hebrew spelling at that time. However, if the proponent of this information has a cite which backs it up, this would be a really good place for it. Also, I think it should be made clear that the hypothesis that vav originally represented the /w/ sound is a hypothesis.
  • Addition of vowels: "Many scripts derived from abjads have been extended with vowel symbols to become full alphabets."
Copyedit required here. How about, "The world's first 'true' alphabet was the Greek. It was developed by extending the Phoenician abjad by the addition of symbols used exclusively for vowel sounds. The Greeks actually adapted several existing symbols, which were used for gutteral consonants not occurring in the Greek language, and gave them new phonetic values." I'm not completely happy with this phrasing, but it's a start.
  • Addition of vowels: "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."
Whoa, there. It is not the "most famous"; it's the first and as far as I know, the only. I'm not aware that any other people added vowels to abjads, so it seems more accurate to say that all 'true' alphabets follow the Greek model. Maybe there is truth to the hypothesis that the writing systems of India are derived from the Phoenician, but they obviously had to have pre-dated the Greeks' innovation.
  • Addition of vowels: "The Greeks did not need the letters for the guttural (א, ה, ח, ע) and co-articulated (צ, ק) consonants."
Neither צ nor ק is a co-articulated consonant. Further, the Greeks could have used the letter ה, since they had the sound /h/ at the time, and later developed a unique method of representing it (accents on the initial letter where the /h/ sound occurred).

Cbdorsett 16:01, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This is madness

Many non-Semitic languages such as English can be written without vowels and read with little difficulty. For example, if the Latin alphabet were a pure abjad, the previous sentence could be written Mn nn-Smtc lnggs sch s nglsh cn b wrttn wtht vwls nd rd wth lttl dffclt (an impure abjad would include more vowels).

r y nsn? Ths s TTLLY NRDBL! f crs y cn rd tht f y hv jst rd th sm sntnc wth th vwls, try wtht knwng n dvnc wht t mns! --Lo'oris 00:33, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

English would certainly be a lot more difficult to read than, say, Arabic in a consonant-only script. And in a language like Spanish, you'd be unable to distinguish masculine and feminine forms! Is l chc "the boy" (el chico) or "the girl" (la chica)? In Italian even number would be indistinguishable, as gender and number are, for many nouns and adjectives, indicated by vowel endings, -o/-a/-i/-e! Some languages with case would fail to distinguish those, too. I restored an edited version of the deleted paragraph Nik42 03:18, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Good work, this edited version is ok :) --Lo'oris 14:01, 13 November 2007 (UTC)


[edit] A not a vowel?

Maybe a stupid question, but if the first character in the Phonecian Abjad is "A", then how does this not contain vowels? Is A not a vowel anymore? Yobmod (talk) 11:51, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, after reading the Phonecian alphabet article, and the phenome article, it seems the first letter in the Phonecian Abdjad was "'" - a glottal constanant. So something is wrong with the first picture's undertitle. Don't know what it should be instead though; can someone change it? Yobmod (talk) 11:51, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I've made a change that hopefully clears up the problem. – jaksmata 21:14, 29 April 2008 (UTC)