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An abjad (; or abgad ) is a writing system in which only are represented by letter signs, leaving the to be inferred by the reader (unless represented otherwise, such as by ). This contrasts with that provide for both consonants and vowels. The term was introduced in 1990 by Peter T. Daniels.Daniels, P. (1990). " Fundamentals of Grammatology". Journal of the American Oriental Society, 110(4), 727-731. . "We must recognize that the West Semitic scripts constitute a third fundamental type of script, the kind that denotes individual consonants only. It cannot be subsumed under either of the other terms. A suitable name for this type would be "alephbeth", in honor of its Levantine origin, but this term seems too similar to "alphabet" to be practical; so I propose to call this type an " abjad", from the Arabic word for the traditional order of its script, which (unvocalized) of course falls in this category. There is yet a fourth fundamental type of script, a type recognized over forty years ago by James-Germain Fevrier, called by him the " neosyllabary" (1948, 330), and again by Fred Householder thirty years ago, who called it "pseudo-alphabet" (1959, 382). These are the scripts of Ethiopia and "greater India" that use a basic form for the specific syllable consonant + a particular vowel (in practice always the unmarked a) and modify it to denote the syllables with other vowels or with no vowel. Were it not for this existing term, I would propose maintaining the pattern by calling this type an "abugida", from the Ethiopian word for the auxiliary order of consonants in the signary." Other terms for the same concept include partial phonemic script, segmentally linear defective phonographic script, consonantary, consonant writing, and consonantal alphabet.Amalia E. Gnanadesikan (2017), "Towards a typology of phonemic scripts", Writing Systems Research, 9:1, 14-35, . "Daniels (1990, 1996a) proposes the name abjad for these scripts, and this term has gained considerable popularity. Other terms include partial phonemic script (Hill, 1967), segmentally linear defective phonographic script (Faber, 1992), consonantary (Trigger, 2004), consonant writing (Coulmas, 1989) and consonantal alphabet (Gnanadesikan, 2009; Healey, 1990). "
Impure abjads, such as the Arabic script and Hebrew alphabet scripts, represent vowels with either optional or a limited number of distinct vowel , or both.
[https://bahai-library.com/lewis_abjad_numerological_system "Overview of the Abjad numerological system"],
Jonah Winters and Frank Lewis, Overview of the Abjad numerological system, Baháʾí Library Online, 1999, quote: "The word abjad is an acronym derived from the first four consonantal shapes in the Arabic alphabet -- Alif, Bá, Jim, Dál. As such abjad designates the letters of the Arabic alphabet (also known as alifbá') in the phrase hurúf al-abjad. An adjective formed from this, abjadí, means a novice at something. Nowadays the Arabic alphabet does not follow the sequence a-b-j-d, but rather the order: A-B-T-Th-J-H.-Kh-D (the basic shapes of the letters A-B-J-D without their diacritical dots do, however, occur in that order, insofar as T and Th are distinguished from B only by dots, and the H. and Kh from the J only by dots). However, the order A-B-J-D is quite ancient, insofar as the word abjad is not of Arabic origin, but comes from earlier written alphabets, perhaps from Phoenician though the sequence may be as old as Ugaritic. In any case, it certainly predates the writing down of Arabic, as can be seen by comparison of Hebrew (Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth) and Greek (Alpha Beta Gamma Delta)." Accessed 2 November 2025.
The contrast of abjad versus alphabet has been rejected by other scholars because abjad is also used as a term for the Arabic numeral system. Also, it may be taken as suggesting that consonantal alphabets, in contrast to e.g. the Greek alphabet, were not yet true alphabets. Florian Coulmas, a critic of Daniels and of the abjad terminology, argues that this terminology can confuse alphabets with "transcription systems", and that there is no reason to relegate the Hebrew, Aramaic or Phoenician alphabets to second-class status as an "incomplete alphabet".
However, Daniels's terminology has found acceptance in the linguistic community.
[http://omniglot.com/writing/alphabetic.htm "Abjads / Consonant alphabets"],
Omniglot.com, 2009, quote: "Abjads, or consonant alphabets, represent consonants only, or consonants plus some vowels. Full vowel indication (vocalisation) can be added, usually by means of diacritics, but this is not usually done." Accessed 22 May 2009.
Rogers, Henry (2005): Writing systems: a linguistic approach. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-23464-0, ISBN 978-0-631-23464-7. See esp. Chap. 7, pp. 115ff.
Schone, Patrick (2006): "Low-resource autodiacritization of abjads for speech keyword search", In INTERSPEECH-2006, paper 1412-Mon3FoP.13.
The Phoenician abjad was a radical simplification of phonetic writing. Unlike other scripts, such as Cuneiform script (Logogram and Syllabary) and Egyptian hieroglyphs (logographic and consonantal), the Phoenician abjad consisted of only a few dozen symbols. Presumably, the relative simplicity of the Phoenician abjad made this script easy to learn, allowed it to gain widespread usage, and influenced how readily it was adopted or adapted into the development of other scripts by non-Phoenicians who encountered seafaring merchants and their script which they brought with them as they traded throughout the ancient Mediterranean world during the first millennium BCE.
During these exchanges, the Phoenician script gave rise to a number of new writing systems, including the widely used Aramaic alphabet abjad and the Greek alphabet. The Greek alphabet was later developed into several alphabets, including Etruscan, Coptic script, Cyrillic, and Latin alphabet (via Etruscan), while Aramaic became the ancestor of many abjads and abugidas of Asia, particularly in and around India, Southeast Asia, and Oceania.
Other sister scripts to Phoenician, that branched from Proto-Sinaitic script are the South Semitic scripts with its two main branches; the Ancient North Arabian scripts that were used in north and central Arabia, until it was displaced by the Arabic alphabetIbn Durayd, Ta'līq min amāli ibn durayd, ed. al-Sanūsī, Muṣṭafā, Kuwait 1984, p. 227 (Arabic). The author purports that a poet from the Kinda tribe in Yemen who settled in Dūmat al-Ǧandal during the advent of Islam told of how another member of the Yemenite Kinda tribe who lived in that town taught the Arabic script to the Banū Qurayš in Mecca and that their use of the Arabic script for writing eventually took the place of musnad, or what was then the Sabaean script of the kingdom of Ḥimyar: "You have exchanged the musnad of the sons of Ḥimyar / which the kings of Ḥimyar were wont to write down in books." and Ancient South Arabian, which evolved later into the Geʽez script, still being used in Eritrea and Ethiopia.
developed along a slightly different route. The basic consonantal symbol was considered to have an inherent "a" vowel sound. Hooks or short lines attached to various parts of the basic letter modify the vowel. In this way, the South Arabian abjad evolved into the Geʽez script of Ethiopia between the 5th century BC and the 5th century AD. Similarly, the Brāhmī abugida of the Indian subcontinent developed around the 3rd century BC (from the Aramaic alphabet, it has been hypothesized).
| Thaana Hanifi Rohingya | |||||||||||
| Nabataean script, Palmyrene, Mandaic alphabet, Parthian, Pahlavi scripts, Sogdian alphabet, Avestan alphabet and Manichaean | |||||||||||
| Late Hebrew, Nabataean script, Syriac alphabet | |||||||||||
| Hebrew, Imperial Aramaic. | |||||||||||
| Arabic alphabet | |||||||||||
| Punic script (variant), Greek alphabet, Etruscan, Latin alphabet, Arabic alphabet, Hebrew alphabet | |||||||||||
| Ancient North Arabian | no | no | right-left | 29 | yes | Arabian Peninsula | Northern Arabians (Pre-Islamic Arabia) | Old Arabic,Ancient North Arabian languages | 8th century BCE - 4th century CE | Proto-Sinaitic | |
| Geʽez syllabary (Ethiopia and Eritrea) | |||||||||||
| Ethiopic (Eritrea & Ethiopia) | |||||||||||
| Paleo-Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic alphabet,Hebrew alphabet | |||||||||||
| Neo-Tifinagh | |||||||||||
| Psalter Pahlavi, Avestan alphabet | |||||||||||
| Old Uyghur alphabet | |||||||||||
| Hanifi Rohingya | yes | no | right-left | 28 | 2 | northern Rakhine State and Chittagong | Rohingya people | Rohingya language | 1980s | Arabic | |
| Thaana | yes | yes | right-left | 24 | 1 | Maldives | Maldivians | Maldivian (Dhivehi) | 17th century | Arabic alphabet, Dhives Akuru | |
| Libyco-Berber | no | no | bottom-top,right left,left-right | 23 | none | North Africa | Berbers | Guanche, Garamantian | c. 7th century | Tifinagh | |
| Chorasmian | no | no | right-left | 19 | none | Khwarazm | Ancient Iranian peoples | Khwarezmian language | early 8th century | Sogdian alphabet | |
| Elymaic | no | no | right-left | 22 | 1 | Khuzestan province,Iran | Ancient Iranian peoples | Imperial Aramaic | 2nd century | Aramaic alphabet | |
| Hatran Aramaic | no | no | right-left | 22 | none | Iraq | Mesopotamia | Hatran Aramaic | 100 BCE | Aramaic | |
| Manichaean | no | no | right-left | 25 | 2 | Northwest China | Sogdian language | 2nd century | Sogdian alphabet | Palmyrene | |
| Palmyrene | no | no | right-left | 23 | none | Syria | Palmyrene Aramaic | 100 BCE | Aramaic alphabet, Manichaean |
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