The Riddle of the Labyrinth (25 page)

Rewritten in the syllabic script, our little paradigm looks like this:

Case I:      

Case II:     

Case III:    

Notice what happens in the switch from alphabet to syllabary. We see, correctly, that the three words share their initial syllable, represented by
. But we also see—wrongly—that the second syllable of Cases I and II is identical, written with
each time. Now look at the paradigms side by side:

With an alphabet, the difference between
servus
and
servum
is plain. With a syllabary, it is completely obscured: Both are written
.

Our syllabary deceives us in other ways. The alphabet tells us that in all three words, the second syllable starts with the same consonant: “
v
us,” “
v
um,” “vo.” The syllabary lies about this fact. Now two different characters,
and
, are used to write that syllable, depending on the word's case. This “spelling change” from
to
is crucial:
and
are the “bridging” characters, representing
both
the last consonant of the stem and the first vowel of the suffix. The character changes because the vowel of the suffix (“v
u
s” and “v
u
m” in Cases I and II; “v
o
” in Case III) has changed.