@aldersprig @literorrery I think an abjad is a writing system like Arabic or Hebrew that doesn't spell out the vowels. The problem with that hypothesis is that Hebrew speakers read vowel-less newspapers just fine, and nobody thinks they speak with only one vowel.
Of course, Judoon are aliens, so who knows?
@DialMforMara @aldersprig@tootplanet.space Basically, yes, but what I was thinking is more along the lines of Middle Egyptian, where all we have is the consonants and none of the hints to tell us what the language sounded like, so a lot of linguists all sub in the same short vowel (ə or ɨ) when speaking it, leading some people to assume that vowels didn't matter. Bad praxis leading to stereotyping.
@DialMforMara @aldersprig@tootplanet.space Or, on the flipside, look at a language like Quecha which "has only three vowels" but in practice, those vowels have incredibly broad interpretive options. Quecha "i" can be anything from "ih" to "ee" to "eh" depending on what's around it.
@aldersprig@tootplanet.space @DialMforMara Short-short, "they have only one vowel" has a lot of wiggle-room for interpretation. None of those interpretations are particularly flattering for the speaker of the statement, but there's ways to have that be "true" and still have a functional language.
@DialMforMara @aldersprig@tootplanet.space ... I... uh... have a small passion for conlangs. *blush* I just don't get much chance to work with it because as hobbies go, it's about number-six on my list and I rarely get below about four these days because of other obligations.
@aldersprig@tootplanet.space @DialMforMara And yes, an abjad is a writing system in which the vowels aren't always written, but can be inferred from context.