As the term "alphasyllabary" suggests, abugidas have been considered an intermediate step between alphabets and syllabaries. Historically, abugidas appear to have evolved from abjads (vowelless alphabets). They contrast with syllabaries, where there is a distinct symbol for each syllable or consonant-vowel combination, and where these have no systematic similarity to each other, and typically develop directly from logographic scripts. Compare the examples above to sets of syllables in the Japanese hiragana syllabary: か "ka", き "ki", く "ku", け "ke", こ "ko" have nothing in common to indicate "k;" while ら "ra", り "ri", る "ru", れ "re", ろ "ro" have neither anything in common for "r", nor anything to indicate that they have the same vowels as the "k" set.