Editing Syllabary (section)

== Difference from abugidas ==
The languages of [[India]] and [[Southeast Asia]], as well as the [[Ethiopian Semitic languages]], have a type of [[alphabet]] called an ''[[abugida]]'' or ''alphasyllabary''. In these scripts, unlike in pure syllabaries, syllables starting with the same consonant are largely expressed with [[grapheme]]s regularly based on common graphical elements. Usually each character representing a syllable consists of several elements which designate the individual sounds of that syllable.

In the 19th century these systems were called ''syllabics'', a term which has survived in the name of [[Canadian Aboriginal syllabic]]s (also an abugida).

In a true syllabary there may be graphic similarity between characters that share a common consonant or vowel sound, but it is not systematic or at all regular. For example, the characters for ''ka ke ko'' in Japanese [[hiragana]] – か け こ – have no similarity to indicate their common /k/ sound. Compare this with [[Devanagari]] script, an abugida, where the characters for ''ka ke ko'' are क के को respectively.