The effect is not unlike the English sound, which is typically written "g" before "i" or "e", but "j" before other vowels ("gem", "jam"), or the Castilian Spanish sound, which is written "c" before "i" or "e" and "z" before other vowels ("cinco, zapato"): it is more accurate to say that some of the Old Persian consonants are written by different letters depending on the following vowel, rather than classifying the script as syllabic. This situation had its origin in Assyrian cuneiform, where several syllabic distinctions had been lost and were often clarified with explicit vowels. However, in the case of Assyrian, the vowel was not always used, and was never used where not needed, so the system remained (logo-)syllabic.