Canadian syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of writing systems used in a number of
Indigenous Canadian languages of the
Algonquian,
Inuit
Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...
, and (formerly)
Athabaskan language families. These languages had no formal writing system previously. They are valued for their distinctiveness from the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
and for the ease with which literacy can be achieved;
[ indeed, by the late 19th century the ]Cree
The Cree ( cr, néhinaw, script=Latn, , etc.; french: link=no, Cri) are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada ...
had achieved what may have been one of the highest rates of literacy in the world.
Syllabics are abugidas
An abugida (, from Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel nota ...
, where glyphs
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
represent consonant-vowel pairs. They derive from the work of James Evans.
Canadian syllabics are currently used to write all of the Cree language
Cree (also known as Cree– Montagnais–Naskapi) is a dialect continuum of Algonquian languages spoken by approximately 117,000 people across Canada, from the Northwest Territories to Alberta to Labrador. If considered one language, it is th ...
s from Naskapi
The Naskapi (Nascapi, Naskapee, Nascapee) are an Indigenous people of the Subarctic native to the historical country St'aschinuw (ᒋᑦ ᐊᔅᒋᓄᐤ, meaning 'our nclusiveland'), which is located in northern Quebec and Labrador, neighb ...
(spoken in Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
) to the Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...
, including Eastern Cree, Woods Cree
Woods Cree is an indigenous language spoken in Northern Manitoba, Northern Saskatchewan and Northern Alberta, Canada. It is part of the Cree language, Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi dialect continuum. The dialect continuum has around 116,000 speakers; ...
, Swampy Cree
The Swampy Cree people, also known by their autonyms ''Néhinaw'', ''Maskiki Wi Iniwak'', ''Mushkekowuk,'' ''Maškékowak'' or ''Maskekon'' (and therefore also ''Muskegon'' and ''Muskegoes'') or by exonyms including ''West Main Cree,'' ''Lowlan ...
and Plains Cree. They are also used to write Inuktitut
Inuktitut (; , syllabics ; from , "person" + , "like", "in the manner of"), also Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the tree line, including parts of the provinces o ...
in the eastern Canadian Arctic; there they are co-official with the Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
in the territory of Nunavut
Nunavut ( , ; iu, ᓄᓇᕗᑦ , ; ) is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' ...
. They are used regionally for the other large Canadian Algonquian language, Ojibwe
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
, as well as for Blackfoot
The Blackfoot Confederacy, ''Niitsitapi'' or ''Siksikaitsitapi'' (ᖹᐟᒧᐧᒣᑯ, meaning "the people" or " Blackfoot-speaking real people"), is a historic collective name for linguistically related groups that make up the Blackfoot or Bla ...
, where they are obsolete. Among the Athabaskan languages
Athabaskan (also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific C ...
further to the west, syllabics have been used at one point or another to write Dakelh
The Dakelh (pronounced ) or Carrier are the indigenous people of a large portion of the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada.
The "Carrier" name was derived from an English translation of ''Aghele'', the name from the neighbouring Sekani ...
(Carrier), Chipewyan
The Chipewyan ( , also called ''Denésoliné'' or ''Dënesųłı̨né'' or ''Dënë Sųłınë́'', meaning "the original/real people") are a Dene Indigenous Canadian people of the Athabaskan language family, whose ancestors are identified ...
, Slavey
The Slavey (also Slave and South Slavey) are a First Nations indigenous peoples of the Dene group, indigenous to the Great Slave Lake region, in Canada's Northwest Territories, and extending into northeastern British Columbia and northwestern ...
, Tłı̨chǫ
The Tłı̨chǫ (, ) people, sometimes spelled Tlicho and also known as the Dogrib, are a Dene First Nations in Canada, First Nations people of the Athabaskan languages, Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group living in the Northwest Territ ...
(Dogrib) and Dane-zaa
The Dane-zaa (ᑕᓀᖚ, also spelled Dunne-za, or Tsattine) are an Athabaskan-speaking group of First Nations people. Their traditional territory is around the Peace River in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada. Today, about 1,600 Dane-zaa resi ...
(Beaver). Syllabics have occasionally been used in the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
by communities that straddle the border, but are principally a Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
phenomenon.
History
Cree syllabics were created in a process that culminated in 1840 by James Evans, a missionary, probably in collaboration with Indigenous language experts. Evans formalized them for Swampy Cree
The Swampy Cree people, also known by their autonyms ''Néhinaw'', ''Maskiki Wi Iniwak'', ''Mushkekowuk,'' ''Maškékowak'' or ''Maskekon'' (and therefore also ''Muskegon'' and ''Muskegoes'') or by exonyms including ''West Main Cree,'' ''Lowlan ...
and Ojibwe
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
. Evans had been inspired by the success of Sequoyah's Cherokee syllabary
The Cherokee syllabary is a syllabary invented by Sequoyah in the late 1810s and early 1820s to write the Cherokee language. His creation of the syllabary is particularly noteworthy as he was illiterate until the creation of his syllabary. He ...
after encountering problems with Latin-based alphabets, and drew on his knowledge of Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental syste ...
and shorthand. Canadian syllabics would in turn influence the Pollard script
The Pollard script, also known as Pollard Miao (Chinese: 柏格理苗文 Bó Gélǐ Miao-wen) or Miao, is an abugida loosely based on the Latin alphabet and invented by Methodist missionary Sam Pollard. Pollard invented the script for use with A ...
in China.[John Nichols, 1996. "The Cree Syllabary". In Daniels & Bright, ''The World's Writing Systems'', p 599''ff''] Other missionaries were reluctant to use it, but it was rapidly indigenized and spread to new communities before missionaries arrived.
A conflicting account is recorded in Cree oral traditions, asserting that the script originated from Cree culture before 1840 (see § Cree oral traditions). Per these traditions, syllabics were the invention of Calling Badger, a Cree man. Legend states that Badger had died and returned from the spirit world to share the knowledge of writing with his people. Some scholars write that these legends were created after 1840.[Verne Dusenberry, 1962. ''The Montana Cree: A Study in Religious Persistence'' (Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis 3). p 267–269] Cree scholar Winona Stevenson explores the possibility that the inspiration for Cree syllabics may have originated from a near-death experience of mistanaskowêw (ᒥᐢᑕᓇᐢᑯᐍᐤ, Calling Badger – from mistanask ᒥᐢᑕᓇᐢᐠ 'badger' and -wêw ᐁᐧᐤ 'voice/call'), a Cree. Stevenson references Fine Day cited in Mandelbaum's ''The Plains Cree'' who states that he learned the syllabary from Strikes-him-on-the-back who learned it directly from mistanâskowêw.
James Evans
In 1827, Evans, a missionary from Kingston upon Hull, England, was placed in charge of the Wesleyan
Wesleyan theology, otherwise known as Wesleyan– Arminian theology, or Methodist theology, is a theological tradition in Protestant Christianity based upon the ministry of the 18th-century evangelical reformer brothers John Wesley and Charles W ...
mission at Rice Lake, Ontario. Here, he began to learn the eastern Ojibwe language
Ojibwe , also known as Ojibwa , Ojibway, Otchipwe,R. R. Bishop Baraga, 1878''A Theoretical and Practical Grammar of the Otchipwe Language''/ref> Ojibwemowin, or Anishinaabemowin, is an indigenous language of North America of the Algonquian lan ...
spoken in the area and was part of a committee to devise a Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
for it. By 1837, he had prepared the ''Speller and Interpreter in English and Indian,'' but was unable to get its printing sanctioned by the British and Foreign Bible Society
The British and Foreign Bible Society, often known in England and Wales as simply the Bible Society, is a non-denominational Christian Bible society with charity status whose purpose is to make the Bible available throughout the world.
The Soc ...
. At the time, many missionary societies were opposed to the development of native literacy in their own languages, believing that their situation would be bettered by linguistic assimilation into colonial society.
Evans continued to use his Ojibwe orthography in his work in Ontario. As was common at the time, the orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
called for hyphens between the syllables of words, giving written Ojibwe a partially syllabic structure. However, his students appear to have had conceptual difficulties using the same alphabet for two different languages with very different sounds, and Evans himself found this approach awkward. Furthermore, the Ojibwe language was polysynthetic
In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able to ...
but had few distinct syllables, meaning that most words had a large number of syllables; this made them quite long when written with the Latin script. He began to experiment with creating a more syllabic script that he thought might be less awkward for his students to use.
In 1840, Evans was relocated to Norway House
Norway House is a population centre of over 5,000 people, some north of Lake Winnipeg, on the bank of the eastern channel of Nelson River, in the province of Manitoba, Canada. The population centre shares the name ''Norway House'' with the north ...
in northern Manitoba
Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...
. Here he began learning the local Swampy Cree
The Swampy Cree people, also known by their autonyms ''Néhinaw'', ''Maskiki Wi Iniwak'', ''Mushkekowuk,'' ''Maškékowak'' or ''Maskekon'' (and therefore also ''Muskegon'' and ''Muskegoes'') or by exonyms including ''West Main Cree,'' ''Lowlan ...
dialect. Like the closely related Ojibwe
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
, it was full of long polysyllabic words.
As an amateur linguist, Evans was acquainted with the Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental syste ...
script used in British India
The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...
; in Devanagari, each letter stands for a syllable, and is modified to represent the vowel of that syllable. Such a system, now called an abugida
An abugida (, from Ge'ez language, Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; ...
, readily lent itself to writing a language such as Swampy Cree, which had a simple syllable structure of only eight consonants and four long or short vowels. Evans was also familiar with British shorthand, presumably Samuel Taylor's '' Universal Stenography,'' from his days as a merchant in England; and now he acquired familiarity with the newly published Pitman shorthand
Pitman shorthand is a system of shorthand for the English language developed by Englishman Sir Isaac Pitman (1813–1897), who first presented it in 1837. Like most systems of shorthand, it is a phonetic system; the symbols do not represent lette ...
of 1837.
Origins in Devanagari and Pitman
The development of Cree syllabics was influenced by Evans' knowledge of Devanagari and Pitman. Devanagari provided the glyphs for the syllables. Pitman provided the glyphs for the final consonants, and also the idea of rotation and line weight to modify the syllables.
In the original Evans script, there were ten syllabic forms: eight for the consonants ''p'', ''t'', ''c'', ''k'', ''m'', ''n'', ''s'', ''y''; a ninth for vowel-initial syllables or vowels following one of the incidental consonants; and a tenth, which is no longer in use, for the consonant cluster ''sp''. There were four incidental consonants, ''r'', ''l'', ''w'', ''h'', which did not have syllabic forms. Except for ''sp'', these can all be traced to the cursive combining forms of the corresponding Devanagari ''akshara;'' the Devanagari combining form is somewhat abbreviated (the right-side stroke is dropped), and in handwriting the running horizontal line may be left off as well, as has been standardized in Gujarati
Gujarati may refer to:
* something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India
* Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat
* Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them
* Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub ...
. (The sequence ''sp'' appears to be a conflation of the shape of ''s'' with the angularity of ''p'', along the conceptual lines of the more contracted ligature
Ligature may refer to:
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure
** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry
* Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
s of Devanagari such as .)
The likeness is stronger if one allows the symbols to rotate to give a similar direction of writing for each vowel; for example, Devanagari ''n'' has the orientation of ''ne'' rather than of ''na''. The motivation for the change of orientation appears to have been to allow the pen to trace the same direction when writing syllables with the same vowels: The reflection class ''ka'', ''ca'', ''ma'', ''sa'', ''ya'' (that is, the consonants that are flipped to distinguish the front ''i'', ''e'' vowels) all follow an L-like path, whereas the rotation class ''a'', ''pa'', ''ta'', ''na'' (those rotated for the front vowels) all follow a C-like path. The orientation of Devanagari ''g-'' (for ''k-''), ''n-'', ''y-'', and possibly ''s-'' had to be flipped for this to happen. (''Sp-'' does not follow this generalization, reflecting its hybrid origin.)
Because Cree consonants can be either voiced
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced.
The term, however, is used to refer ...
or voiceless, depending on their environment, each corresponds to two Devanagari letters, and Cree ''ka''/''ga'', for example, resembles Devanagari ''g'' rather than ''k''. The consonant ''h'', which only occurs as a final in syllabics, appears to derive from the Devanagari visarga
Visarga ( sa, विसर्गः, translit=visargaḥ) means "sending forth, discharge". In Sanskrit phonology ('' ''), ' (also called, equivalently, ' by earlier grammarians) is the name of a phone voiceless glottal fricative, , written as: ...
, ''ḥ'', which also occurs only as a final, rather than from syllabic ''ha''.
:
:*Cursive is more similar to ᓴ, looking rather like .
It is possible that ''-l'' and ''-r'' were derived through rotation from one Devanagari glyph, in the spirit of Pitman, where ''l'' and ''r'' are related in this way, rather than from the two different glyphs suggested by the table.
In contrast, the final consonants ''p t c k m n s'' and ''y'' (which Evans called "final i"), which are now only used for Western Cree, derive from Pitman shorthand. The linear glyphs ᑊ ᐟ ᐨ ᐠ ''p t c k'' are rotated 45° from Pitman ᐠ ᑊ ᐟ ᐨ ''p t c k,'' but keep their relative orientations intact; the lunate glyphs ᒼ ᐣ ᐢ ''m n s'' are rotated 90° from Pitman ᐢ ᓑ ᐣ ''m n s.'' The Cree "final i" was originally a dot, as was the diacritic for the vowel ''i'' in Pitman.
:
The final ''hk,'' however, is ᕽ, a small version of the Greek letter Χ ''kh'', chosen because Χ is a logogram
In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced ''hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, as ...
for Christ.
The use of rotation to change the vowel of a syllable is unique to Canadian syllabics, but had its antecedent in shorthand. Pitman used rotation to change place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
: plosives ''p t ch k,'' nasals ''m n,'' and fricatives ''h s sh f th'' were all related through rotation, as can be partially seen in the table of finals above.
Initially, Evans indicated vowel length with light versus heavy lines (the feature used to indicate voicing in Pitman); but this proved awkward in print, and by 1841 it was changed to broken lines for long vowels versus solid lines for short vowels. Later Evans introduced the current practice of writing a dot above the syllable to indicate vowel length.
Adoption and use
]
The local Cree community quickly took to this new writing system. Cree people began to use it to write messages on tree bark using burnt sticks, leaving messages out on hunting trails far from the mission. Evans believed that it was well adapted to Native Canadian languages, particularly the Algonquian languages
The Algonquian languages ( or ; also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Indigenous languages of the Americas, indigenous American languages that include most languages in the Algic languages, Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language f ...
with which he was familiar. He claimed that "with some slight alterations" it could be used to write "every language from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains."
Evans attempted to secure a printing press
A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in wh ...
and new type to publish materials in this writing system. Here, he began to face resistance from colonial and European authorities. The Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...
, which had a monopoly on foreign commerce in western Canada, refused to import a press for him, believing that native literacy was something to be discouraged. Evans, with immense difficulty, constructed his own press and type and began publishing in syllabics.
Evans left Canada in 1846 and died shortly thereafter. However, the ease and utility of syllabic writing ensured its continued survival, despite European resistance to supporting it. In 1849, David Anderson David Anderson may refer to:
People In academia or science
*David Anderson (academic) (born 1952), American college professor
*David Anderson (engineer) (1880–1953), Scottish civil engineer and lawyer
*David Anderson, 2nd Viscount Waverley (1911 ...
, the Anglican
Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...
bishop of Rupert's Land
Rupert's Land (french: Terre de Rupert), or Prince Rupert's Land (french: Terre du Prince Rupert, link=no), was a territory in British North America which comprised the Hudson Bay drainage basin; this was further extended from Rupert's Land t ...
, reported that "a few of the Indians iccan read by means of these syllabic characters; but if they had only been taught to read their own language in our letters, it would have been one step towards the acquisition of the English tongue." But syllabics had taken root among the Cree (indeed, their rate of literacy was greater than that of English and French Canadians), and in 1861, fifteen years after Evans had died, the British and Foreign Bible Society
The British and Foreign Bible Society, often known in England and Wales as simply the Bible Society, is a non-denominational Christian Bible society with charity status whose purpose is to make the Bible available throughout the world.
The Soc ...
published a Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
in Cree syllabics
Cree syllabics are the versions of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics used to write Cree dialects, including the original syllabics system created for Cree and Ojibwe. There are two main varieties of syllabics for Cree: Western Cree syllabics and ...
.[Methodist Bible in Cree syllabics]
/ref> By then, both Protestant
Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...
and Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
missionaries
A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...
were using and actively propagating syllabic writing.
Missionary work in the 1850s and 1860s spread syllabics to western Canadian Ojibwe
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
dialects (Plains Ojibwe
The Saulteaux (pronounced , or in imitation of the French pronunciation , also written Salteaux, Saulteau and other variants), otherwise known as the Plains Ojibwe, are a First Nations band government in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, A ...
and Saulteaux
The Saulteaux (pronounced , or in imitation of the French pronunciation , also written Salteaux, Saulteau and other variants), otherwise known as the Plains Ojibwe, are a First Nations band government in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Al ...
), but it was not often used over the border by Ojibwe in the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. Missionaries who had learned Evans' system spread it east across Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
and into Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
, reaching all Cree language
Cree (also known as Cree– Montagnais–Naskapi) is a dialect continuum of Algonquian languages spoken by approximately 117,000 people across Canada, from the Northwest Territories to Alberta to Labrador. If considered one language, it is th ...
areas as far east as the Naskapi
The Naskapi (Nascapi, Naskapee, Nascapee) are an Indigenous people of the Subarctic native to the historical country St'aschinuw (ᒋᑦ ᐊᔅᒋᓄᐤ, meaning 'our nclusiveland'), which is located in northern Quebec and Labrador, neighb ...
. Attikamekw, Montagnais and Innu
The Innu / Ilnu ("man", "person") or Innut / Innuat / Ilnuatsh ("people"), formerly called Montagnais from the French colonial period ( French for "mountain people", English pronunciation: ), are the Indigenous inhabitants of territory in the ...
people in eastern Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
and Labrador
, nickname = "The Big Land"
, etymology =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Canada
, subdivision_type1 = Province
, subdivision_name1 ...
use Latin alphabets
The lists and tables below summarize and compare the letter inventories of some of the Latin-script alphabets. In this article, the scope of the word "alphabet" is broadened to include letters with tone marks, and other diacritics used to repres ...
.
In 1856, John Horden
John Horden (January 20, 1828Long, John S. (2003) ''Dictionary of Canadian Biography'', vol. 12. University of Toronto/Université Laval. Retrieved 2013-12-10. – January 12, 1893) was the first Anglican Bishop of Moosonee, Canada, who for more ...
, an Anglican missionary at Moose Factory, Ontario
Moose Factory is a community in the Cochrane District, Ontario, Canada. It is located on Moose Factory Island, near the mouth of the Moose River, which is at the southern end of James Bay. It was the first English-speaking settlement in lands no ...
, who adapted syllabics to the local James Bay Cree dialect, met a group of Inuit
Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...
from the region of Grande Rivière de la Baleine in northern Quebec. They were very interested in adapting Cree syllabics
Cree syllabics are the versions of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics used to write Cree dialects, including the original syllabics system created for Cree and Ojibwe. There are two main varieties of syllabics for Cree: Western Cree syllabics and ...
to their language. He prepared a few based on their pronunciation of Inuktitut
Inuktitut (; , syllabics ; from , "person" + , "like", "in the manner of"), also Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the tree line, including parts of the provinces o ...
, but it quickly became obvious that the number of basic sounds and the simple model of the syllable in the Evans system was inadequate to the language. With the assistance of Edwin Arthur Watkins, he dramatically modified syllabics to reflect these needs.
In 1876, the Anglican church
Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of the ...
hired Edmund Peck
Edmund James Peck (April 15, 1850 – September 10, 1924), known in Inuktitut as ''Uqammaq'' (one who talks well), to work full-time in their mission at Great Whale River
The Great Whale River () is a river in Nunavik, Quebec, Canada. It flows from Lac Saint-Luson through Lac Bienville west to Hudson Bay. While lower section of the river (after Lac Bienville) has very powerful current, with many waterfalls (up t ...
, teaching syllabics to the Inuit
Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...
and translating materials into syllabics. His work across the Arctic
The Arctic ( or ) is a polar regions of Earth, polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm (Greenla ...
is usually credited with the establishment of syllabics among the Inuit. With the support of both Anglican
Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...
and Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
missionary societies, by the beginning of the 20th century the Inuit were propagating syllabics themselves.
In the 1880s, John William Tims, an Anglican missionary from Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
, invented a number of new forms to write the Blackfoot language
The Blackfoot language, also called Siksiká (its denomination in ISO 639-3, ; Siksiká ik͡siká syllabics ), often anglicised as ', is an Algonquian language spoken by the Blackfoot or ''Niitsitapi'' people, who currently live in the nort ...
.
French Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
missionaries were the primary force for expanding syllabics to Athabaskan languages
Athabaskan (also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific C ...
in the late 19th century. The Oblate
In Christianity (especially in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Methodist traditions), an oblate is a person who is specifically dedicated to God or to God's service.
Oblates are individuals, either laypersons or clergy, normally livi ...
missionary order was particularly active in using syllabics in missionary work. Oblate father Adrien-Gabriel Morice
Adrien-Gabriel Morice (27 August 1859 – 21 April 1939) was a missionary priest belonging to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. He served as a missionary in Canada, and created a writing system for the Carrier language.
Early life
Father Morice wa ...
adapted syllabics to Dakelh
The Dakelh (pronounced ) or Carrier are the indigenous people of a large portion of the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada.
The "Carrier" name was derived from an English translation of ''Aghele'', the name from the neighbouring Sekani ...
, inventing a large number of new basic characters to support the radically more complicated phonetics of Athabaskan languages. Father Émile Petitot
Émile-Fortuné Petitot (also known as Émile-Fortuné-Stanislas-Joseph Petitot) (Inuk name, ''Mitchi Pitchitork Tchikraynarm iyoyé'', meaning "Mr. Petitot, son of the Sun") (December 3, 1838 – May 13, 1916), a French Missionary Oblate, was a n ...
developed syllabic scripts for many of the Athabaskan languages of the Northwest Territories
The Northwest Territories (abbreviated ''NT'' or ''NWT''; french: Territoires du Nord-Ouest, formerly ''North-Western Territory'' and ''North-West Territories'' and namely shortened as ''Northwest Territory'') is a federal territory of Canada. ...
, including Slavey
The Slavey (also Slave and South Slavey) are a First Nations indigenous peoples of the Dene group, indigenous to the Great Slave Lake region, in Canada's Northwest Territories, and extending into northeastern British Columbia and northwestern ...
and Chipewyan
The Chipewyan ( , also called ''Denésoliné'' or ''Dënesųłı̨né'' or ''Dënë Sųłınë́'', meaning "the original/real people") are a Dene Indigenous Canadian people of the Athabaskan language family, whose ancestors are identified ...
.
Cree influenced the design of the Pollard script
The Pollard script, also known as Pollard Miao (Chinese: 柏格理苗文 Bó Gélǐ Miao-wen) or Miao, is an abugida loosely based on the Latin alphabet and invented by Methodist missionary Sam Pollard. Pollard invented the script for use with A ...
in China.[Joakim Enwall (1994) ''A Myth Become Reality: History and Development of the Miao Written Language.'']
Cree oral traditions
Cree oral traditions state that the script was gifted to the Cree through the spirit world, rather than being invented by a missionary.
In the 1930s, Chief Fine Day of the Sweetgrass First Nation told Mandelbaum the following account:
A Wood Cree named Badger-call died and then became alive again. While he was dead he was given the characters of the syllabary and told that with them he could write Cree. Strike-him-on-the-back learned this writing from Badger-call. He made a feast and announced that he would teach it to anyone who wanted to learn. That is how I learned it. Badger-call also taught the writing to the missionaries. When the writing was given to Badger-call he was told 'They he missionarieswill change the script and will say that the writing belongs to them. But only those who know Cree will be able to read it.' That is how we know that the writing does not belong to the whites, for it can be read only by those who know the Cree language.
Fine Day's grandson Wes Fineday gave the following account on CBC radio Morningside in two interviews in 1994 and 1998:
Fineday the younger explained that Calling Badger came from the Stanley Mission area and lived ten to fifteen years before his grandfather's birth in 1846. On his way to a sacred society meeting one evening Calling Badger and two singers came upon a bright light and all three fell to the ground. Out of the light came a voice speaking Calling Badger's name. Soon after, Calling Badger fell ill and the people heard he had passed away. During his wake three days later, while preparing to roll him in buffalo robes for the funeral, the people discovered that his body was not stiff like a dead person's body should be. Against all customs and tradition the people agreed to the widow's request to let the body sit one more night. The next day Calling Badger's body was still not stiff so the old people began rubbing his back and chest. Soon his eyes opened and he told the people he had gone to the Fourth World, the spirit world, and there the spirits taught him many things. Calling Badger told the people of the things he was shown that prophesized events in the future, then he pulled out some pieces of birch bark with symbols on them. These symbols, he told the people, were to be used to write down the spirit languages, and for the Cree people to communicate among themselves. (Stevenson 20)
When asked whether the story was meant to be understood literally, Wes Fineday commented: "The sacred stories ... are not designed necessarily to provide answers but merely to begin to point out directions that can be taken. ... Understand that it is not the work of storytellers to bring answers to you. ... What we can do is we can tell you stories and if you listen to those stories in the sacred manner with an open heart, an open mind, open eyes and open ears, those stories will speak to you."
In December 1959, anthropologist Verne Dusenberry, while among the Plains Cree on the Rocky Boy reservation in Montana
Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbi ...
, was told a similar narrative by Raining Bird:
According to Raining Bird "the spirits came to one good man and gave him some songs. When he mastered them, they taught him how to make a type of ink and then showed him how to write on white birch bark." He also received many teachings about the spirits which he recorded in a birch bark book. When the one good man returned to his people he taught them how to read and write. "The Cree were very pleased with their new accomplishment, for by now the white men were in this country. The Cree knew that the white traders could read and write, so now they felt that they too were able to communicate among themselves just as well as did their white neighbors." (Stevenson 21)
Stevenson (aka Wheeler) comments that the legend is commonly known among the Cree.
Linguist Chris Harvey believes that the syllabics were a collaboration between English missionaries and Indigenous Cree- and Ojibwe-language experts.
There is no known surviving physical evidence of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics before Norway House
Norway House is a population centre of over 5,000 people, some north of Lake Winnipeg, on the bank of the eastern channel of Nelson River, in the province of Manitoba, Canada. The population centre shares the name ''Norway House'' with the north ...
.
Basic principles
Canadian "syllabic" scripts are not syllabaries
In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words.
A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (option ...
, in which every consonant–vowel sequence has a separate glyph, but abugida
An abugida (, from Ge'ez language, Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; ...
s, in which consonants are modified in order to indicate an associated vowel—in this case through a change in orientation (which is unique to Canadian syllabics). In Cree, for example, the consonant ''p'' has the shape of a chevron. In an upward orientation, ᐱ, it transcribes the syllable ''pi''. Inverted, so that it points downwards, ᐯ, it transcribes ''pe''. Pointing to the left, ᐸ, it is ''pa,'' and to the right, ᐳ, ''po''. The consonant forms and the vowels so represented vary from language to language, but generally approximate their Cree origins.[
]
:
Because the script is presented in syllabic charts and learned as a syllabary, it is often considered to be such. Indeed, computer fonts have separate coding points for each syllable (each orientation of each consonant), and the Unicode Consortium
The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intenti ...
considers syllabics to be a "featural syllabary" along with such scripts as hangul
The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The let ...
, where each block represents a syllable, but consonants and vowels are indicated independently (in Cree syllabics, the consonant by the shape of a glyph, and the vowel by its orientation). This is unlike a true syllabary, where each combination of consonant and vowel has an independent form that is unrelated to other syllables with the same consonant or vowel.
Syllabic and final consonant forms
The original script, which was designed for Western Swampy Cree, had ten such letterforms: eight for syllables based on the consonants ''p-'', ''t-'', ''c-'', ''k-'', ''m-'', ''n-'', ''s-'', ''y-'' (pronounced /p, t, ts, k, m, n, s, j/), another for vowel-initial syllables, and finally a blended form, now obsolete, for the consonant cluster ''sp-''. In the 1840 version, all were written with a light line to show the vowel was short and a heavier line to show the vowel was long: ᑲ ''ka'', ᑲ ''kâ''; however, in the 1841 version, a light line indicated minuscules ("lowercase") and a heavier line indicated majuscules
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
("uppercase"): ᑲ ''ka'', ᑲ ''KA'' or ''Ka''; additionally in the 1841 version, an unbroken letterform indicated a short vowel, but for a long vowel, Evans notched the face of the type sorts, such that in print the letterform was broken. A handwritten variant using an overdot
When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the '' interpunct'' ( · ), or to the glyphs "combining dot above" ( ◌̇ ) and "combining dot below" ( ◌̣ )
which may be combined with some letters of t ...
to indicate a long vowel is now used in printing as well: ᑕ ''ta'', ᑖ ''tâ''. One consonant, ''w'', had no letterform of its own but was indicated by a diacritic on another syllable; this is because it could combine with any of the consonants, as in ᑿ ''kwa'', as well as existing on its own, as in ᐘ ''wa''.[
There were distinct letters for the nine consonants ''-p'', ''-t'', ''-c'', ''-k'', ''-m'', ''-n'', ''-s'', ''-y'', and ''w'' when they occurred at the end of a syllable. In addition, four "final" consonants had no syllabic forms: ''-h'', ''-l'', ''-r'', and the sequence ''-hk''. These were originally written midline, but are now superscripted. (The glyph for ''-hk'' represents the most common final sequence of the language, being a common grammatical ending in Cree, and was used for common ''-nk'' in Ojibwe.) The consonants ''-l'' and ''-r'' were marginal, only found in borrowings, baby talk, and the like. These, and ''-h'', could occur before vowels, but were written with the final shape regardless. (''-l'' and ''-r'' are now written the size of full letters when they occur before vowels, as the finals were originally, or in some syllabics scripts have been replaced with full rotating syllabic forms; ''-h'' only occurs before a vowel in joined morphemes, in couple grammatical words, or in pedagogical materials to indicate the consonant value following it is fortis.)][
]
Vowel transformations
The vowels fall into two sets, the back vowel
A back vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the highest point of the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be c ...
s ''-a'' and ''-u,'' and the front vowel
A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would otherw ...
s ''-e'' and ''-i.'' Each set consists of a lower vowel, ''-a'' or ''-e,'' and a higher vowel, ''-u'' or ''-i.'' In all cases, back-vowel syllables are related through left-right reflection: that is, they are mirror images of each other. How they relate to front-vowel syllables depends on the graphic form of the consonants. These follow two patterns. Symmetrical, ''vowel, p-, t-, sp-,'' are rotated 90 degrees (a quarter turn) counter-clockwise, while those that are asymmetrical top-to-bottom, ''c-, k-, m-, n-, s-, y-,'' are rotated 180 degrees (a half turn). The lower front-vowel (''-e'') syllables are derived this way from the low back-vowel (''a'') syllables, and the high front-vowel (''-i'') syllables are derived this way from the higher back-vowel (''-u'') syllables.[
The symmetrical letter forms can be illustrated by arranging them into a diamond:
::
And the asymmetrical letter forms can be illustrated by arranging them into a square:
::
These forms are present in most syllabics scripts with sounds values that approach their Swampy Cree origins. For example, all scripts except the one for Blackfoot use the triangle for vowel-initial syllables.
By 1841, when Evans cast the first movable type for syllabics, he found that he could not satisfactorily maintain the distinction between light and heavy typeface for short and long vowels. He instead filed across the raised lines of the type, leaving gaps in the printed letter for long vowels. This can be seen in early printings. Later still a dot diacritic, originally used for vowel length only in handwriting, was extended to print: Thus today ᐊ ''a'' contrasts with ᐋ ''â,'' and ᒥ ''mi'' contrasts with ᒦ ''mî''. Although Cree ''ê'' only occurs long, the script made length distinctions for all four vowels. Not all writers then or now indicate length, or do not do so consistently; since there is no contrast, no one today writes ''ê'' as a long vowel.][
]
Pointing
Reflecting the shorthand principles on which it was based, syllabics may be written ''plain'', indicating only the basic consonant–vowel outline of speech, or ''pointed'', with diacritics for vowel length and the consonants and . Full phonemic pointing is rare. Syllabics may also be written without word division, as Devanagari once was, or with spaces or dots between words or prefixes.[
]
Punctuation
The only punctuation found in many texts is spacing between words and ᙮ for a full stop. Punctuation from the Latin script, including the period (.), may also be used.[ Due to the final ''c'' resembling a hyphen, a ]double hyphen
In Latin script, the double hyphen is a punctuation mark that consists of two parallel hyphens. It was a development of the earlier , which developed from a Central European variant of the virgule slash, originally a form of scratch comma. Si ...
is used as the Canadian Aboriginal syllabics hyphen.
Glossary
Some common terms as used in the context of syllabics
"Syllables", or full-size letters
The full-sized characters, whether standing for consonant-vowel combinations or vowels alone, are usually called "syllables". They may be phonemic
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
rather than morphophonemic
Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes (mi ...
syllables. That is, when one morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology.
In English, morphemes are ...
(word element) ends in a consonant and the next begins with a vowel, the intermediate consonant is written as a syllable with the following vowel. For example, the Plains Cree word "indoors" has as its first morpheme, and ''āyi'' as its second, but is written ᐲᐦᒑᔨᕽ
In other cases, a "syllable" may in fact represent only a consonant, again due to the underlying structure of the language. In Plains Cree, ᑖᓂᓯ "hello" or "how are you?" is written as if it had three syllables. Because the first syllable has the stress and the syllable that follows has a short , the vowel is dropped. As a result, the word is pronounced "tānsi" with only two syllables.
Syllabication is important to determining stress in Algonquian languages, and vice versa, so this ambiguity in syllabics is relatively important in Algonquian languages.
Series
The word "series" is used for either a set of syllables with the same vowel, or a set with the same initial consonant. Thus the n-series is the set of syllables that begin with ''n,'' and the o-series is the set of syllables that have ''o'' as their vowel regardless of their initial consonant.
"Finals", or reduced letters
A series of small raised letters are called "finals". They are usually placed after a syllable to indicate a final consonant, as the ᕽ ''-hk'' in ᔨᕽ above. However, the Cree consonant ''h,'' which only has a final form, begins a small number of function words such as ᐦᐋᐤ ''hāw.'' In such cases the "final" ᐦ represents an ''initial'' consonant and therefore precedes the syllable.
The use of diacritics to write consonants is unusual in abugidas. However, it also occurs (independently) in the Lepcha script
The Lepcha script, or Róng script, is an abugida used by the Lepcha people to write the Lepcha language. Unusually for an abugida, syllable-final consonants are written as diacritics.
History
Lepcha is derived from the Tibetan script, and ma ...
.
Finals are commonly employed in the extension of syllabics to languages it was not initially designed for. In some of the Athabaskan alphabets, finals have been extended to appear at mid height after a syllable, lowered after a syllable, and at mid height before a syllable. For example, Chipewyan and Slavey use the final ᐟ in the latter position to indicate the initial consonant ''dl'' ().
In Naskapi, a small raised letter based on ''sa'' is used for consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...
s that begin with /s/: ᔌ ᔍ ᔎ and ᔏ The Cree languages the script was initially designed for had no such clusters.
In Inuktitut, something similar is used not to indicate sequences, but to represent additional consonants, rather as the digraphs ''ch, sh, th'' were used to extend the Latin letters ''c, s, t'' to represent additional consonants in English. In Inuktitut, a raised ''na-ga'' is placed before the ''g-'' series, ᖏ ᖑ ᖓ, to form an ''ng-'' () series, and a raised ''ra'' (uvular ) is placed before syllables of the ''k-'' series, ᕿ ᖁ ᖃ, to form a uvular ''q-'' series.
Although the forms of these series have two parts, each is encoded into the Unicode standard as a single character.
Diacritics
Other marks placed above or beside the syllable are called "diacritics". These include the dot placed above a syllable to mark a long vowel, as in ᒦ ''mî,'' and the dot placed at mid height after the syllable (in western Cree dialects) or before the syllable (in eastern Cree dialects) to indicate a medial ''w,'' as in ᑿ ''kwa.'' These are all encoded as single characters in Unicode.
Diacritics used by other languages include a ring above on Moose Cree ᑬ ''kay'' (encoded as "kaai"), head ring on Ojibwe ᕓ ''fe'', head barb on Inuktitut ᖤ ''lha'', tail barb on West Cree ᖌ ''ro'', centred stroke (a small vertical bar) in Carrier ᗇ ''ghee'', centred dot in Carrier ᗈ ''ghi'', centred bar (a bar perpendicular to the body) in Cree ᖨ ''thi'', and a variety of other marks. Such diacritics may or may not be separately encoded into Unicode. There is no systematic way to distinguish elements that are parts of syllables from diacritics, or diacritics from finals, and academic discussions of syllabics are often inconsistent in their terminology.
Points and pointing
The diacritic mark used to indicate vowel length is often referred to as a "point". Syllabics users do not always consistently mark vowel length, ''w,'' or ''h.'' A text with these marked is called a "pointed" text; one without such marks is said to be "unpointed".
Syllabaries and syllabics
The word ''syllabary'' has two meanings: a writing system with a separate character for each syllable, but also a table of syllables, including any script arranged in a syllabic chart. Evans' Latin Ojibwe alphabet, for example, was presented as a syllabary. Canadian Aboriginal ''syllabics'', the script itself, is thus distinct from a syllabary (syllabic chart) that displays them.
Round and Square
While Greek, Latin, and Cyrillic have Serif
In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...
and Sans-Serif
In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...
forms, Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics generally do not. Instead, like the Proportional and Monospace font
A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional font, is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts with variable-width fonts, where the letters and spaci ...
s, Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics have a Round form and a Square form. Round form, known in Cree as , is akin to a Proportional font, characterised their smooth bowls, differing letter heights, and occupying a rectangular space. Round form syllabics are more commonly found east of Lake Winnipeg
Lake Winnipeg (french: Lac Winnipeg, oj, ᐑᓂᐸᑲᒥᐠᓴᑯ˙ᑯᐣ, italics=no, Weenipagamiksaguygun) is a very large, relatively shallow lake in North America, in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Manitoba, Canada. I ...
. Square form, known in Cree as , is akin to a Monospace font, characterised by their cornered bowls, same letter heights, and occupying a square space. Square form syllabics are more commonly found west of Lake Winnipeg.
Syllabic alphabets
The inventory, form, and orthography of the script vary among all the Cree communities which use it. However, it was further modified to create specific alphabets for other Algonquian languages
The Algonquian languages ( or ; also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Indigenous languages of the Americas, indigenous American languages that include most languages in the Algic languages, Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language f ...
, as well as for Inuit
Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...
, which have significant phonological differences from Cree. There are two major variants of the script, Central Algonquian and Inuktitut. In addition, derivative scripts for Blackfoot
The Blackfoot Confederacy, ''Niitsitapi'' or ''Siksikaitsitapi'' (ᖹᐟᒧᐧᒣᑯ, meaning "the people" or " Blackfoot-speaking real people"), is a historic collective name for linguistically related groups that make up the Blackfoot or Bla ...
and Athabaskan inherit at least some principals and letter forms from the Central Algonquian alphabet, though in Blackfoot most of the letters have been replaced with modified Latin. Each reflects a historical expansion of the writing system.
Central Algonquian
Cree and Ojibwe were the languages for which syllabics were designed, and they are the closest to the original pattern described by James Evans. The dialects differ slightly in their consonants, but where they share a sound, they generally use the same letter for it. Where they do not, a new letter was created, often by modifying another. In several Cree dialects ''ê'' has merged with the ''î'', and these use only three of the four vowel orientations.
Eastern and western syllabics
When syllabics spread to Ojibwe and to those Cree dialects east of the Manitoba–Ontario border, a few changes occurred. For one, the diacritic used to mark non-final ''w'' moved from its position after the syllable to before it; thus western Cree is equivalent to the eastern Cree – both are pronounced ''mwa.'' Secondly, the special final forms of the consonants were replaced with superscript variants of the corresponding ''a'' series in Moose Cree and Moose Cree influenced areas, so that is ''ak'' and ''sap'' (graphically "aka" and "sapa"), rather than and ; among some of the Ojibwe communities superscript variants of the corresponding ''i'' series are found, especially in handwritten documents. Cree dialects of the western provinces preserve the Pitman-derived finals of the original script, though final ''y'' has become the more salient , to avoid confusion with the various dot diacritics. Additional consonant series are more pervasive in the east.
:
Additional consonant series
A few western charts show full ''l-'' and ''r-'' series, used principally for loan words. In a Roman Catholic variant, ''r-'' is a normal asymmetric form, derived by adding a stroke to ''c-,'' but ''l-'' shows an irregular pattern: Despite being asymmetrical, the forms are rotated only 90°, and ''li'' is a mirror image of what would be expected; it is neither an inversion nor a reflection of ''le,'' as in the other series, but rather a 180° rotation.
:''Some western additions''
::
::
Series were added for ''l-, r-, sh- (š-)'' and ''f-'' in most eastern Cree dialects. ''R-'' is an inversion of the form of western ''l-,'' but now it is ''re'' that has the unexpected orientation. ''L-'' and ''f-'' are regular asymmetric and symmetric forms; although ''f-'' is actually asymmetric in form, it is derived from ''p-'' and therefore rotates 90° as ''p-'' does. Here is where the two algorithms to derive vowel orientations, which are equivalent for the symmetrical forms of the original script, come to differ: For the ᕙ ''f-'' series, as well as a rare ᕦ ''th-'' series derived from ᑕ ''t-,'' vowels of like height are derived via counter-clockwise rotation; however, an eastern ''sh-'' series, which perhaps not coincidentally resembles a Latin ''s,'' is rotated ''clockwise'' with the opposite vowel derivations: high ''-i'' from low ''-a'' and lower ( mid) ''-e'' from higher (mid) ''-o.'' The obsolete ''sp-'' series shows this to be the original design of the script, but Inuktitut, perhaps generalizing from the ᕙ series, which originated as ᐸ plus a circle at the start of the stroke used to write the letters, but as an independent form must be rotated in the opposite (counter-clockwise) direction, is consistently counter-clockwise. (The eastern Cree ''r-'' series can be seen as both of these algorithms applied to ''ro'' (bold), whereas western Cree ''l-'' can be seen as both applied to ''la'' (bold).)
:''Some eastern additions''
::
::
There are minor variants within both eastern and western Cree. Woods Cree, for example, uses western Cree conventions, but has lost the ''e'' series, and has an additional consonant series, ''th- (ð-),'' which is a barred form of the ''y-'' series.
::
Moose Cree, which uses eastern Cree conventions, has an ''-sk'' final that is composed of ''-s'' and ''-k,'' as in ᐊᒥᔉ "beaver", and final ''-y'' is written with a superscript ring, , rather than a superscript ''ya,'' which preserves, in a more salient form, the distinct final form otherwise found only in the west: ᐋᣁ''āshay'' "now".
The Eastern Cree dialect has distinct labialized
Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve ...
finals, ''-kw'' and ''-mw''; these are written with raised versions of the o-series rather than the usual a-series, as in ᒥᔅᑎᒄ "tree". This is motivated by the fact that the vowel ''o'' labializes the preceding consonant.
Although in most respects Naskapi
The Naskapi (Nascapi, Naskapee, Nascapee) are an Indigenous people of the Subarctic native to the historical country St'aschinuw (ᒋᑦ ᐊᔅᒋᓄᐤ, meaning 'our nclusiveland'), which is located in northern Quebec and Labrador, neighb ...
follows eastern Cree conventions, it does not mark vowel length at all and uses two dots, either placed above or before a syllable, to indicate a ''w'': ''wa,'' ''wo,'' ''twa,'' ''kwa,'' ''cwa'' (), ''mwa,'' ''nwa,'' ''swa,'' ''ywa.'' Since Naskapi ''s-'' consonant clusters are all labialized, ''sCw-,'' these also have the two dots: ''spwa, etc.'' There is also a labialized final sequence, ''-skw,'' which is a raised ''so-ko.''
See also:
* Ojibwe syllabics
Ojibwe is an indigenous language of North America from the Algonquian language family. Ojibwe is one of the largest Native American languages north of Mexico in terms of number of speakers and is characterized by a series of dialects, some of ...
* Oji-Cree language
The Severn Ojibwa or the Oji-Cree language (ᐊᓂᐦᔑᓂᓃᒧᐏᐣ, ''Anishininiimowin''; Unpointed: ᐊᓂᔑᓂᓂᒧᐏᐣ) is the indigenous name for a dialect of the Ojibwe language spoken in a series of Oji-Cree communities in norther ...
Inuktitut
The eastern form of Cree syllabics was adapted to write the Inuktitut
Inuktitut (; , syllabics ; from , "person" + , "like", "in the manner of"), also Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the tree line, including parts of the provinces o ...
dialects of Nunavut
Nunavut ( , ; iu, ᓄᓇᕗᑦ , ; ) is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' ...
(except for the extreme west, including Kugluktuk
Kugluktuk (, ; Inuktitut syllabics: ; ), formerly known as Coppermine until 1 January 1996, is a hamlet located at the mouth of the Coppermine River in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, Canada, on Coronation Gulf, southwest of Victoria Island. I ...
and Cambridge Bay
Cambridge Bay (Inuinnaqtun: ''Iqaluktuuttiaq'' Inuktitut: ᐃᖃᓗᒃᑑᑦᑎᐊᖅ; 2021 population 1,760; population centre 1,403) is a hamlet located on Victoria Island in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, Canada. It is the largest settl ...
) and Nunavik
Nunavik (; ; iu, ᓄᓇᕕᒃ) comprises the northern third of the province of Quebec, part of the Nord-du-Québec region and nearly coterminous with Kativik. Covering a land area of north of the 55th parallel, it is the homeland of the I ...
in northern Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
. Unicode 14.0 added support for the Natsilingmiutut
Netsilik , Natsilik, Nattilik, Netsilingmiut, Natsilingmiutut, Nattilingmiutut, or Nattiliŋmiutut is an Inuit language variety spoken in western Nunavut, Canada, by Netsilik Inuit.
''Natsilingmiut'' (ᓇᑦᓯᓕᖕᒥᐅᑦ "people from Natsil ...
language of Western Nunavut. In other Inuit areas, various Latin alphabets are used.
Inuktitut has only three vowels, and thus only needs the ''a-, i-,'' and ''o''-series of Cree, the latter used for . The ''e''-series was originally used for the common diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
, but this was officially dropped in the 1960s so that Inuktitut would not have more characters than could be moulded onto an IBM Selectric typewriter
The IBM Selectric typewriter was a highly successful line of electric typewriters introduced by IBM on 31 July 1961.
Instead of the "basket" of individual typebars that swung up to strike the ribbon and page in a typical typewriter of the perio ...
ball, with ''-ai'' written as an ''a''-series syllable followed by ''i.'' Recently the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, (Inuktitut syllabics: , meaning "Inuit are united in Canada") previously known as the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (Eskimo Brotherhood of Canada), is a nonprofit organization in Canada that represents over 65,000 Inuit acro ...
decided to restore the ai-series, and the Makivik Corporation
Makivik Corporation ( iu, ᒪᑭᕝᕕᒃ ᑯᐊᐳᕇᓴᑦ, script=, ; french: Société Makivik) is the legal representative of Quebec's Inuit, established in 1978 under the terms of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, the agreement t ...
has adopted this use in Nunavik
Nunavik (; ; iu, ᓄᓇᕕᒃ) comprises the northern third of the province of Quebec, part of the Nord-du-Québec region and nearly coterminous with Kativik. Covering a land area of north of the 55th parallel, it is the homeland of the I ...
; it has not been restored in Nunavut
Nunavut ( , ; iu, ᓄᓇᕗᑦ , ; ) is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' ...
.
Inuktitut has more consonants than Cree, fifteen in its standardised form. As Inuktitut has no , the ''c'' series has been reassigned to the value ''g'' (). The ''y'' series is used for either ''y-'' or ''j-,'' since the difference is one of dialect; similarly with the ''s'' series, which stands for either ''s-'' or ''h-'', depending on the dialect. The eastern Cree ''l'' series is used: ''la,'' ''lu,'' ''li,'' ''lai;'' a stroke is added to these to derive the voiceless ''lh'' () series: ''lha, etc.'' The eastern Cree ''f'' series is used for Inuktitut ''v-'': ''va, etc.'' The eastern Cree ''r'' series is used for the very different Inuktitut sound, , which is also spelled ''r''. However, this has been regularized in form, with vowels of like height consistently derived through counter-clockwise rotation, and therefore ''rai'' the inversion of ''ri'':
::
The remaining sounds are written with digraphs. A raised ''ra'' is prefixed to the k-series to create a digraph for ''q'': ''qa, etc.''; the final is ''-q.'' A raised ''na-ga'' is prefixed to the g-series to create an ''ng'' () series: ''nga, etc.,'' and the ''na'' is doubled for geminate ''nng'' (): ''nnga.'' The finals are and .
In Nunavut, the ''h'' final has been replaced with Roman , which does not rotate, but in Nunavik a new series is derived by adding a stroke to the k-series: ''ha, etc.''
In the early years, Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
and Anglican
Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...
missionaries used slightly different forms of syllabics for Inuktitut. In modern times, however, these differences have disappeared. Dialectical variation across the syllabics-using part of the Inuit world has promoted an implicit diversity in spelling, but for the most part this has not had any impact on syllabics itself.
Derived scripts
At least two scripts derive from Cree syllabics, and share its principles, but have fundamentally different letter shapes or sound values.
Blackfoot
Blackfoot
The Blackfoot Confederacy, ''Niitsitapi'' or ''Siksikaitsitapi'' (ᖹᐟᒧᐧᒣᑯ, meaning "the people" or " Blackfoot-speaking real people"), is a historic collective name for linguistically related groups that make up the Blackfoot or Bla ...
, another Algonquian language, uses a syllabary developed in the 1880s that is quite different from the Cree and Inuktitut versions. Although borrowing from Cree the ideas of rotated and mirrored glyphs with final variants, most of the letter forms derive from the Latin script, with only some resembling Cree letters. Blackfoot has eight initial consonants, only two of which are identical in form to their Cree equivalents, ''se'' and ''ye'' (here only the vowels have changed). The other consonants were created by modifying letters of the Latin script to make the ''e'' series, or in three cases by taking Cree letters but reassigning them with new sound values according to which Latin letters they resembled. These are ''pe'' (from ), ''te'' (from ), ''ke'' (from ), ''me'' (from ), ''ne'' (from ), ''we'' (from ). There are also a number of distinct final forms. The four vowel positions are used for the three vowels and one of the diphthongs of Blackfoot. The script is largely obsolete.
Carrier and other Athabaskan
Athabaskan syllabic scripts were developed in the late 19th century by French Roman Catholic missionaries, who adapted this originally Protestant writing system to languages radically different from the Algonquian languages. Most Athabaskan languages
Athabaskan (also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific C ...
have more than four distinct vowels, and all have many more distinct consonants than Cree. This has meant the invention of a number of new consonant forms. Whereas most Athabaskan scripts, such as those for Slavey
The Slavey (also Slave and South Slavey) are a First Nations indigenous peoples of the Dene group, indigenous to the Great Slave Lake region, in Canada's Northwest Territories, and extending into northeastern British Columbia and northwestern ...
and Chipewyan
The Chipewyan ( , also called ''Denésoliné'' or ''Dënesųłı̨né'' or ''Dënë Sųłınë́'', meaning "the original/real people") are a Dene Indigenous Canadian people of the Athabaskan language family, whose ancestors are identified ...
, bear a reasonably close resemblance to Cree syllabics, the Carrier (Dakelh
The Dakelh (pronounced ) or Carrier are the indigenous people of a large portion of the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada.
The "Carrier" name was derived from an English translation of ''Aghele'', the name from the neighbouring Sekani ...
) variant is highly divergent, and only one series – the series for vowels alone – resembles the original Cree form.
To accommodate six distinctive vowels, Dakelh supplements the four vowel orientations with a dot and a horizontal line in the rightward pointing forms: ᐊ ''a'', ᐅ ''ʌ'', ᐈ ''e'', ᐉ ''i'', ᐃ ''o'', and ᐁ ''u''.
One of the Chipewyan scripts is more faithful to western Cree. ( Sayisi Chipewyan is substantially more divergent.) It has the nine forms plus the western ''l'' and ''r'' series, though the rotation of the ''l-'' series has been made consistently counter-clockwise. The ''k-'' and ''n-'' series are more angular than in Cree: ''ki'' resembles Latin "P". The ''c'' series has been reassigned to ''dh''. There are additional series: a regular ''ch'' series (ᗴ ''cha'', ᗯ ''che'', ᗰ ''chi'', ᗱ ''cho''), graphically a doubled ''t''; and an irregular ''z'' series, where ''ze'' is derived by counter-clockwise rotation of ''za'', but ''zi'' by clockwise rotation of ''zo'':
::
Other series are formed from ''dh'' or ''t''. A mid-line final Cree ''t'' preceding ''dh'' forms ''th,'' a raised Cree final ''p'' following ''t'' forms ''tt,'' a stroke inside ''t'' forms ''tth'' (ᕮ ''ttha''), and a small ''t'' inside ''t'' forms ''ty'' (ᕳ ''tya''). Nasal vowels are indicated by a following Cree final ''k.''
All Athabaskan syllabic scripts are now obsolescent.
Pollard script
The Pollard script, also known as Pollard Miao is an abugida
An abugida (, from Ge'ez language, Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; ...
invented by Methodist missionary Samuel Pollard. Pollard credited the basic idea of the script to the Cree syllabics, saying, "While working out the problem, we remembered the case of the syllabics used by a Methodist missionary among the Indians of North America, and resolved to do as he had done".
Current usage
At present, Canadian syllabics seems reasonably secure within the Cree, Oji-Cree, and Inuit communities, somewhat more at risk among the Ojibwe, seriously endangered for Athabaskan languages and Blackfoot.
In Nunavut
Nunavut ( , ; iu, ᓄᓇᕗᑦ , ; ) is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' ...
and Nunavik
Nunavik (; ; iu, ᓄᓇᕕᒃ) comprises the northern third of the province of Quebec, part of the Nord-du-Québec region and nearly coterminous with Kativik. Covering a land area of north of the 55th parallel, it is the homeland of the I ...
, Inuktitut syllabics have official status. In Nunavut, laws, legislative debates and many other government documents must be published in Inuktitut in both syllabics and the Latin script. The rapid growth in the scope and quantity of material published in syllabics has, by all appearances, ended any immediate prospect of marginalisation for this writing system.
Within the Cree and Ojibwe language communities, the situation is less confident.
Cree syllabics use is vigorous in most communities where it has taken root. In many dialect areas, there are now standardised syllabics spellings. Nonetheless, there are now linguistically adequate standardised Roman writing systems for most if not all dialects.
Ojibwe speakers in the U.S. have never been heavy users of either Canadian Aboriginal syllabics or the Great Lakes Aboriginal syllabics
Great Lakes Algonquian syllabics (or Great Lakes Aboriginal syllabics,Walker, Willard, 1996; Goddard, Ives, 1996 also referred to as "Western Great Lakes Syllabary" by Campbell) is a writing system for several Algonquian languages that emerged du ...
and have now essentially ceased to use either of them at all. The "double vowel" Roman orthography developed by Charles Fiero and further developed by John Nichols is increasingly the standard in the U.S. and is beginning to penetrate into Canada, in part to prevent further atomisation of what is already a minority language. Nonetheless, Ojibwe syllabics are still in vigorous use in some parts of Canada.
Use in other communities is moribund.
Blackfoot syllabics have, for all intents and purposes, disappeared. Present day Blackfoot speakers use a Latin alphabet, and very few Blackfoot can still read—much less write—the syllabic system.
Among the Athabaskan languages, no syllabics script is in vigorous use. In some cases, the languages themselves are on the brink of extinction. In other cases, syllabics has been replaced by a Latin alphabet. Many people—linguists and speakers of Athabaskan languages alike—feel that syllabics is ill-suited to these languages. The government of the Northwest Territories does not use syllabic writing for any of the Athabaskan languages on its territory, and native churches have generally stopped using them as well. Among Dakelh users, a well-developed Latin alphabet has effectively replaced syllabics, which are now understood almost exclusively by elderly members of the community.
In the past, government policy towards syllabics has varied from indifference to open hostility. Until quite recently, government policy in Canada openly undermined native languages, and church organisations were often the only organised bodies using syllabics. Later, as governments became more accommodating of native languages, and in some cases even encouraged their use, it was widely believed that moving to a Latin alphabet was better, both for linguistic reasons and to reduce the cost of supporting multiple scripts.
At present, at least for Inuktitut and Algonquian languages, Canadian government tolerates, and in some cases encourages, the use of syllabics. The growth of Aboriginal nationalism in Canada and the devolution of many government activities to native communities has changed attitudes towards syllabics. In many places there are now standardisation bodies for syllabic spelling, and the Unicode standard supports a fairly complete set of Canadian syllabic characters for digital exchange. Syllabics are now taught in schools in Inuktitut-speaking areas, and are often taught in traditionally syllabics-using Cree and Ojibwe communities as well.
Although syllabic writing is not always practical (on the Internet, for example), and in many cases a Latin alphabet would be less costly to use, many native communities are strongly attached to syllabics. Even though it was originally the invention of European missionaries, many people consider syllabics a writing system that belongs to them, and associate Latin letters to linguistic assimilation.
Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics in Unicode
The bulk of the characters, including all that are found in official documents, are encoded into three blocks in the Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
standard:
* Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics (U+1400–U+167F)
* Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Extended
Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Extended is a Unicode block containing extensions to the Canadian syllabics contained in the Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Unicode block for some dialects of Cree, Ojibwe, Dene
The Dene people ...
(U+18B0–U+18FF)
* Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Extended-A
Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Extended-A is a Unicode block containing extensions to the Canadian syllabics contained in the Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Unicode block. The extension adds missing characters for Nattilik and hi ...
(U+11AB0–U+11ABF)
These characters can be rendered with any appropriate font, including the freely available fonts listed below. In Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
, built-in support was added through the Euphemia
Euphemia ( el, Εὐφημία; "well-spoken f), known as the All-praised in the Eastern Orthodox Church, was a virgin, who was martyred for her faith at Chalcedon in 303 AD.
According to tradition, Euphemia was arrested for refusing to offer ...
font introduced in Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
, though this has incorrect forms for ''sha'' and ''shu''.
See also
*Inuktitut syllabics
Inuktitut syllabics ( iu, ᖃᓂᐅᔮᖅᐸᐃᑦ, qaniujaaqpait, or , ) is an abugida-type writing system used in Canada by the Inuktitut-speaking Inuit of the territory of Nunavut and the Nunavik and Nunatsiavut regions of Quebec and Labra ...
* Inuktitut writing
*Kaktovik numerals
The Kaktovik numerals or Kaktovik Iñupiaq numerals are a base-20 system of numerical digits created by Alaskan Iñupiat. They are visually Iconicity, iconic, with shapes that indicate the number being represented.
The Iñupiaq language#Nume ...
*Cree syllabics
Cree syllabics are the versions of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics used to write Cree dialects, including the original syllabics system created for Cree and Ojibwe. There are two main varieties of syllabics for Cree: Western Cree syllabics and ...
*Ojibwe syllabics
Ojibwe is an indigenous language of North America from the Algonquian language family. Ojibwe is one of the largest Native American languages north of Mexico in terms of number of speakers and is characterized by a series of dialects, some of ...
*Carrier syllabics
Carrier or Déné syllabics (, Dʌlk'ʷahke, (Dulkw'ahke) meaning ''toad feet'') is a script created by Adrien-Gabriel Morice for the Carrier language. It was inspired by Cree syllabics and is one of the writing systems in the Canadian Aboriginal ...
*Kamloops Wawa
The ''Kamloops Wawa'' ( Chinook Jargon: 𛰅𛱁𛰙𛰆𛱛𛰂𛰜 𛱜𛱜, "Talk of Kamloops") was a newspaper published by Father Jean-Marie-Raphaël Le Jeune, superior of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kamloops in British Colu ...
* Mi'kmaq hieroglyphic writing
*Cherokee syllabary
The Cherokee syllabary is a syllabary invented by Sequoyah in the late 1810s and early 1820s to write the Cherokee language. His creation of the syllabary is particularly noteworthy as he was illiterate until the creation of his syllabary. He ...
Notes
References
*Comrie, Bernard. 2005. "Writing systems." Martin Haspelmath, Matthew Dryer, David Gile, Bernard Comrie, eds. ''The world atlas of language structures,'' 568–570. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
*Murdoch, John. 1981
''Syllabics: A successful educational innovation.''
MEd thesis, University of Manitoba
*Nichols, John. 1996. "The Cree syllabary." Peter Daniels and William Bright, eds. ''The world's writing systems,'' 599–611. New York: Oxford University Press.
External links
Paper on Carrier Syllabics
Inuktitut syllabary Braille code
* ttp://www.albertasource.ca/methodist/Pictures/Cree_Bible1.htm Methodist Bible in Cree syllabics
Dene syllabic prayer book
Cree Origin of Syllabics
Cree Standard Roman Orthography to syllabics converter
Free font downloads
ScriptSource entry for Cans script
Lists a few fonts.
GNU FreeFont
UCAS + UCASE range in sans-serif face.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics