Abugida

An abugida is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units, each unit based on a consonant letter with vowel notation secondary, like a diacritical mark. The cited article says it is sometimes also called an alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, and contrasts it with a full alphabet, in which vowels have status equal to consonants, with an abjad, in which vowel marking is absent, partial or optional, and with a syllabary, in which a single symbol denotes the combination of a consonant and a vowel. Abugidas include the extensive Brahmic family of scripts of Tibet and South and Southeast Asia, the Semitic Ethiopic scripts and Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, and the term abugida was chosen for the concept in 1990 by Peter T. Daniels. Scripts the atlas records as abugidas are grouped under this entry.