Abugida

An “abugida” is a type of writing system in which each symbol typically represents a consonant with an inherent vowel sound, and other vowels are denoted by diacritical marks or modifications to the base consonant letter.

This contrasts with alphabets, where vowels and consonants are written as independent letters, and syllabaries, where each character represents a syllable.

The term “abugida” comes from the first four characters of the Ge’ez script of Ethiopia, a classic example of this system.

Other well-known examples of abugidas include the Devanagari script used in Hindi and Sanskrit, and the Thai script.