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.
...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]:
Somebody in the know should correct this, I'm not sure enough to do it myself.
Pjacobi 14:29, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
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)
Barry B. Powell writes about this term (2009, Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 172-174):
"To one scholar, the West Semitic writings were an “alphabet”; to another, they were a “consonantal alphabet”; to another, they are a “consonantal writing”; to others, a “consonantry”; to another, a “consonantal syllabary.” Whatever category the West Semitic writings belonged to, they did not work like the Greek alphabet, always qualified as the “first true alphabet” or something similar. Inspecting only the external features of a writing, and mindful of the controversy, one scholar has suggested the term abjad for the West Semitic writings, an acronym from the first four signs in the Arabic signary Alif, Ba, Jim, Dal, according to an order of the signs no longer observed in modern Arabic (grouped according to letter shape). The order appears to be very old, but how old is hard to say, perhaps a variation on an unattested ancient Phoenician series aleph, beth, gimel, daleth. Now one encounters this term on Wikipedia and even in print. Arabic writing is of course a West Semitic writing, in which only the long vowels are notated within the otherwise consonantal system, much as functioned the ancient matres lectionis. Unfortunately, to call West Semitic writing an abjad, a Semitic equivalent to the Greek alphabetos, does not clarify its inner structure or place the writing within a general theory of how writing systems are related historically and how as types they are related to the elements of speech. Just as well the neologism abugida, offered by the creator of “abjad” to categorize the scripts of Ethiopia and India and other similar scripts, further obscures that such writings are minor modifications of the ancient West Semitic syllabic system. The term abugida is based on a medieval Ethiopic signary, a contraction of the Semitic names aleph, beth, gimel, daleth (abugida) or however they might have sounded in Ethiopia around 1000 AD. Again, it is the Greek word alphabetos with a Semitic accent. In “abugidas” the basic sign is said to stand for a consonant + /a/, then the same consonant with different vowels is designated by diacritic marks added to the basic sign, as in the Ethiopic writing mentioned above: The medieval Ethiopic writing, c. AD 1000, based on a Southwest Semitic version of West Semitic script, worked in this way. So did the much older syllabic Indian Karosthi and Brahmi scripts. The Karosthi script appeared in the 3rd century BC in the Punjab (modern Pakistan) under the influence of earlier Persian bureaucratic use of the West Semitic Aramaic script and language. Karosthi script died out in the 3rd century AD, when the still earlier Brahmi script also disappeared. Short examples of Brahmi script have recently been found from the 5th or even 6th century BC. Karosthi and Brahmi scripts appear to be independent developments from the West Semitic Aramaic. The Brahmi syllabic script is the ancestor of all modern “native” scripts in India, including Devanagari script (“sacred script of the city”), in which today are written Hindi, Marathi, Pali, Sindhi and many other south Asian languages. Brahmi script was also the ancestor of scripts in Tibet, Mongolia, and Southeast Asia. The earliest extended documents in Brahmi are edicts published by King Ashoka, who ruled 273 to 232 BC and included in his empire most of modern India, parts of Afghanistan and Persia, and portions of Bengal. He accepted the teachings of Sakyamuni the Buddha and installed 33 edicts, which ringed all of India, about the need to follow dharma, “righteousness,” in his kingdom, and to follow other Buddhist social and moral precepts. The Edicts of Ashoka are in fact the earliest testimony to Buddhist teachings. While the edicts in the east were in Brahmi script in an eastern Indo-European language (Magadhi, probably the language of the Buddha), edicts in the west were in Karosthi script and a western Indo-European language (an ancestor to Sanskrit) … its model, Aramaic, must have been syllabic too, unless we believe that the inventor of Brahmi script rejected the “phonemic” analysis of West Semitic signs to encode syllables instead. The Greek alphabet, and its revolutionary system of vocalization, was two hundred years old in c. 600 BC, if Brahmi script goes back that far, but the inventor of Brahmi script clung nonetheless to the syllabic structure of his model. Such writings as West Semitic and Ethiopic and Brahmi are not “abjads” or “abugidas,” nomenclature based solely on external features, but old-fashioned syllabaries answering to the human faculty to break down speech into syllabic units. Such was the inner structure of these writings." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wakantanka (talk • contribs) 16:15, 15 July 2009 (UTC)wakan (talk) 16:44, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Do we actually have evidence that the term "adjab" has been accepted by most other scholars? Or at lest english speaking scholars? Is there a scholarly debate going on? The french and german pages still refer to a "alphabet consonantique" and "Konsonantenschrift". The french page even mentions that the term "adjab" has been criticised as eurocentric (their link is dead though, so i did not add that to the english terminology section). It seems to me that if the term has not been accepted in scholarly debate the article should be titled as "consonantal alphabet", and "abjad" should be a subsection at best. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:2933:B300:9CDF:CD94:2D1A:80A0 (talk) 01:43, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
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)
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
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.
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
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
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)
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)
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)
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.
An abugida is a full syllabary. --FourthAve 20:58, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
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)
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)
Hebrew tet is homologous to greek theta. It wasn't removed or turned into a vowel. Zargulon 21:42, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
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:
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Cbdorsett 16:01, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
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)
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)
There are a good amount of weasel words in the intro. Also, I am pretty sure that "an unusual sort of syllabary" smacks of cultural bias, as there are more than a billion people who use this "unusual" system regularly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.242.156.9 (talk) 14:59, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Even before I saw the note about not representing a worldwide view, I'd added my paragraph about the Tengwar. This is NOT intended as a stunt; when J. R. R. Tolkien did his inventing, he always drew on his philological knowledge, and I think it's fascinating that a European Christian produced an impure abjab! GeorgeTSLC (talk) 21:01, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
On July 17, Crissov moved this page from Abjad to Consonantary. As far as I can tell, this move was not discussed at all. The main issue with this is that none of the transcluded templates were edited to have the new name in them. Should this be moved back to Abjad? -- Imperator3733 (talk) 23:14, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
“Abjad” is the Maltese word for “white”. --88.78.4.51 (talk) 17:13, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
On the Hieratic page which lists itself as part of the abjad system, someone states "It is an error to view hieratic as a derivative of hieroglyphic writing. The earliest texts from Egypt are produced with ink and brush, with no indication their signs are descendants of hieroglyphs." On this page the suggestion of proto-sinaticus and thus abjad writing is derived from the hieroglyphs. Either there is a contradiction on this page, or something needs to be mentioned about why people think hieroglyphs originate abjad writing. Faro0485 (talk) 15:15, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
To be precise, the hieroglyphic writing is also to a certain extent abjad since it represents consonants but not vowels. What complicates the hieroglyphs is that they can also represent morphemes, kind of like the mesopotamian cuneiform. The abjads in use today are presumed to be derived from the hieroglyphs via the proto-sinaitic script. What is important to note is that hieratic and hieroglyphic writing did not evolve one out of the other, but from what we know today they evolved alongside each other in the same environment for different purposes. Hieratic was used for everyday writing, hieroglyphic for monumentary inscriptions. They are both adbjads in the sense that they do not write vowels. The hieroglyphic writing is to complex to be narrowed down by so a specific term however, and the term would be somewhat debased if carelessly extended to include hieroglyphic writing. Amilah (talk) 03:13, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
""Al-'Arabiyya", lit. "the Arabic" An example of the Arabic script, which is an impure abjad. For example, the vertical bar in the beginning indicates that the word begins with a vowel without defining it." The vertical bar at the beginning (right end) of this word is the Arabic equivalent of the long A; the first two letters are the definite article 'al.' The third letter is the first letter of the word normally transliterated as 'arabyyia' but in fact is a glottal stop -- usually symbolized, if necessary, in English with an apostrophe as 'Arabia. It may sound odd to say that Arabic words do not begin with vowels but it's true. Words we are familiar with which appear to begin with vowels (such as Arabic, algebra, Amman) begin either with a (non-transliterated) glottal stop or the definite article.Cross Reference (talk) 15:26, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
Thus the explanation under the picture is incorrect, and I shall remove it. (This doesn't change the fact that Arabic script is an impure abjad.)--Mathae (talk) 12:13, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I changed the text from "The name abjad itself derives from the first four letters of the Arabic alphabet" to "The name abjad itself derives from the Arabic word for alphabet" before noticing it was discussed further down in the Terminology section. Should that sentence in the lede be eliminated altogether? —Wiki Wikardo 18:25, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
The following paragraph is unsourced and generally in such bad shape (apparently mangled through repeated sloppy cuts and pastes) that I have simply removed it. Because I am not familiar enough with the topic, I have no idea where to begin copyediting it. The paragraph also feels out of place, and the flow of the section is improved without it. If someone can clean it up ßß and more importantly, source it -- feel free to add it back in.
Incidentally, I have also removed the last line of this section, as it was a fragment of a sentence apparently also orphaned through cutting and pasting. It had no clear antecedent anywhere in the section (and, for that matter, no real relevance to the topic that I could ascertain).--Nonstopdrivel (talk) 21:09, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
An anonymous (98.177.211.210) made a contribution which was misleading towards the origin of the word ʾabǧad. I corrected it. It's from the order of all Semitic-legacy letters, such as Arabic letters, which used to be ordered that way, as Hebrew and other Semitic scripts letters. The new ordering which is called hiǧāʾī was an attempt to order letters together according to their similar shapes. Arabic letters are still used in the ʾabǧad order if they were to be used in numbering, the same way it is done in English: a, b, c, d or I, II, III, IV, V, VI... --Mahmudmasri (talk) 00:43, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
Whose opinion is at Abjad#structure of Semitic languages that claims the Abjad orthography improves word root recognition? --Mahmudmasri (talk) 21:25, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I added a chart of extinct and extant abjads. Please help to improve it (add citations, improve my style, etc..)GreenGibbon (talk) 17:35, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Aren't both the same? I think there is a duplicate mention in this article. --92slim (talk) 05:25, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
Yiddish is certainly not an abjad - The vowels must be written out (א, ע, י, ו, װ, ײ). I think the same is true for Ladino. However, the Hebrew script is used for these languages, so I don't know whether to correct the table or not. Please advise or execute the change. --75.103.235.18 (talk) 16:49, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Instead of using the term abjad, they should just use the Hebrew word for it, "Aleph-Bet", and call it that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.163.106.71 (talk) 19:50, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
It is unfortunate that the original author of this article (Abjad) chose to use the date designations "BC" and "AD." No part of the article itself is about languages derived from Greek or Latin. Further, the periods discussed are from 100 years to 1900 years before the Christian era.
These talk sections begin at least as early as October 2003, meaning that the article, itself, was written at least 13 years ago. Increasingly, since that time, however, scholars using dates preceding the Christian era, and especially those working in fields such as archeology, Biblical studies, linguistics, and history, have recognized that the use of Christian date designations, in a world in which scholars increasingly come from the two-thirds of the world's population that is non Christian, is inappropriate, except, perhaps, in articles about Christianity itself or about the Christian world.
Finally, the article is largely based on the work of Daniels and Bright's The World's Writing Systems (1996), and they use the modern nonsectarian date designations "CE" and "BCE" ("common era" and "before the common era").
Since, therefore, it would appear that the original author of "Abjad" may have intentionally chosen to inappropriately substitute Christian date designations for the nonsectarian designations used by Daniels and Bright; and because, in the intervening 13 years since that decision was made, the scholarly world has emphatically switched to using the nonsectarian date designations "CE" and “BCE"; I recommend that the date designations in this article be changed to "CE" and "BCE," either by the original author or by a decision made by Wikipedia administrators.
A more general decision to switch exclusively (with a few exceptions) to nonsectarian date designations in Wikipedia is something that I and others have previously suggested would be appropriate and advisable, but the original administrative decision to allow the initiating author to make the choice for each article has been allowed to stand. Perhaps it's time to again revisit that original administrative decision. Wikifan2744 (talk) 23:32, 1 October 2016 (UTC) Wikifan2744 (talk) 17:25, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
Firejuggler86 (talk) 19:26, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
I added Matres Lectionis count to the table, I wasn't sure about Identifing them as the names [of the charecters] are two long [to use], using each script [in its own row] is kind of unhelpful for the reader, and useing only one [script in all rows] is biased. For the record here they are in Hebrew Script.
In addition the vowels of Ugaritic are a,i,u. a replaces aleph and the two others are added at the end.
Mandai is actually an alphabeth, somewhat prefigurating yidish. so I deleted it.
--Nngnna (talk) 13:14, 29 September 2019 (UTC) [edited: 09:47, 11 October 2019 (UTC)]
@Mahmudmasri You removed my edit taking care of the table overflow. Do you mind telling me why you prefer the way it is at present? It overflows both on desktop and mobile view. – Wkee4ager ( talk 14:39, 10 February 2022 (UTC)