complex consonant clusters – for a total of 15–16 thousand distinct syllables. Some syllabaries have larger inventories: the Yi script contains 756 different A writing system is any conventional system for representing a particular language using a set of symbols (called a script), as well as the rules those symbols encode. The earliest of conventional writing systems appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independently invented writing system gradually emerged from a system of proto-writing, where a small number of ideogr A writing system is any conventional system for representing a particular language using a set of symbols… Ac… A syllabary is a set of written symbols (called syllabograms) that represent either syllables or moras – a unit of prosody that is often but not always a syllable in length. Syllabaries are best suited to languages with relatively simple syllable structure, since a different symbol is needed for every syllable. For example, the Japanese writing system has two kana syllabaries (hiragana and katakana) intended for use in distinct circumstances; both have syllabograms for each of the roughly 100 moras found in Japanese. By contrast, English features complex syllable structures, with a relatively large inventory of vowels and complex consonant clusters – for a total of 15–16 thousand distinct syllables. Some syllabaries have larger inventories: the Yi script contains 756 different symbols. An abugida is a type of alphabet with symbols corresponding to consonant–vowel pairs, where basic symbols for each consonant are associated with an inherent vowel by default, and other possible vowels for each consonant are indicated via predictable modifications made to the basic symbols. In an abugida, there may be a sign for k with no vowel, but also one for ka (if a is the inherent vowel), and ke is written by modifying the ka sign in a way consistent with how la would be modified to get le. In many abugidas, modification consists of the addition of a vowel sign; other possibilities include rotation of the basic sign, or addition of diacritics. While true syllabaries have one symbol per syllable and no systematic visual similarity, the graphic similarity in most abugidas stems from their origins as abjads – with added symbols comprising markings for different vowels added onto a pre-existing base symbol. The largest single group of abugidas is the Brahmic family of scripts, however, which includes nearly all the scripts used in India and Southeast Asia. The name abugida was derived by linguist Peter T. Daniels (b. 1951) from the first four characters of an order of the Geʽez script, which is used for certain Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea.