Bugida

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A type of writing system in which each consonant symbol carries an inherent vowel that is changed by attached marks, as in many South Asian scripts
2. An alphasyllabary, a script whose basic characters are consonant-vowel units that are altered with added signs to show other vowels
3. A family of scripts in which the core symbol stands for a consonant plus a default vowel, and diacritics mark different vowel sounds

Etymology: A "bugida" is a type of writing system, the term used by linguists for scripts in which each basic symbol stands for a consonant with an inherent vowel, which is changed by a diacritic or by a modification of the symbol's shape. The word comes from Sanskrit, where "bugida" is a technical term adopted into scholarly English for this category of writing. Devanagari, the script used for Hindi and Sanskrit, is the best-known example, and its consonant letters carry an "a" sound unless marked otherwise. The term was coined by modern linguists as a classification label rather than by the speakers of any ancient language, so it describes a family of scripts instead of naming a single historical tradition. Its counterparts in the same classification are "abugida" and "alphabet," the last of which describes scripts where vowels get separate letters. Linguists chose the Sanskrit-derived name because the Brahmic family of scripts, which includes Devanagari, is the largest and most familiar group of such systems.