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junonlast Thursday at 8:50 AM3 repliesview on HN

It's a class of script. A language with a script that omits vowels is called a "(pure) abjad(ic)" language. Egyptian (arguably, I'm not a linguist) and Arabic are examples of "impure abjad" languages. Usually they have diacritics that hint at vowel sounds but are otherwise devoid of explicit vowel glyphs, so I'm not sure if Egyptian strictly fits that bill - maybe someone else does. Point is, it's perhaps a bit foreign to latin-language speakers but there's a whole class of languages that do this, or something similar.

There are a few purely abjadic languages, one that comes to mind I believe is Phonician.


Replies

wongarsulast Thursday at 10:56 AM

The idea of leaving out most vwls isn't evn that frgn to latin scrpts. It's just not the default mode and only permissible with good reasons

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foobarianlast Thursday at 2:38 PM

Ancient Hebrew (as found in Torah scrolls) also comes to mind. Though they added vowel hints at some point

bandramilast Thursday at 9:19 AM

The writing of vowels also varied greatly over time so any sweeping statement somebody makes can attract a chorus of "yes but"