A abjad , or consonant alphabet , indicates a Alphabet noting only Consonne S (or noting mainly the consonants), as in Arab or Hebrew. The term comes from the first letters of the historical Arabic alphabet (and not of its current version), that is to say ʾalif , bāʾ , ǧīm and dāl (rear RTL أبجد).

The Voyelle S of the words are returned only to the reading or by auxiliary signs of rare employment, mainly of the Diacritique S. In this case, these auxiliaries of reading are used only in even religious teaching texts (field in which one adds also signs of Cantillation). One thus speaks for such written forms about a scriptio defectiva , “defective writing”: the C-W communication is indeed most of the time incomplete and requires of the reader that he correctly knows already a word given for the lira.

The majority of the writing S noting of the Semitic Langues is abjads, for reasons related to the morphophonologic structure of these languages, in which it is possible, by knowing the suitable rules of Grammaire, to guess the place and the stamp of the vowels. The long vowels of the abjads are however often noted by means of matres lectionis (consonants playing a vocalic part), with the result that there exist only little of abjads “pure”. The Arabic alphabet, by certain aspects, approaches sometimes more alphabet that abjad.

In the abjads, it is frequent that the letters more or less change form according to their place in the word; to consult contextual Alternative for more details.

List principal abjads

• Arabic alphabet;
• Hebrew alphabet;
• Alphabet ougaritic;
• Alphabet phenician;
• Alphabet nabatéen;
• Alphabet Samaritan;
• syriaque Alphabet;

Related articles

• writing;
• Spelling-book;
• Alphabet;
• Alphasyllabaire ;
• Logogramme ;
• Sinogramme ;
• Diacritics;
• Transliteration;
• Alphabetical classification;
• special Characters.