Carrier or Déné syllabics (, Dʌlk'ʷahke, (Dulkw'ahke) meaning ''
toad
Toad is a common name for certain frogs, especially of the family Bufonidae, that are characterized by dry, leathery skin, short legs, and large bumps covering the parotoid glands.
A distinction between frogs and toads is not made in scient ...
feet'') is a script created by
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 ...
for the
Carrier language
The Dakelh (ᑕᗸᒡ) or Carrier language is a Northern Athabaskan language. It is named after the Dakelh people, a First Nations people of the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada, for whom Carrier has been a common English name derive ...
. It was inspired by
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 ...
and is one of the writing systems in the
Canadian Aboriginal syllabics Unicode range.
History
The Dakelh people once enjoyed extensive literacy with the script. It is recorded that it was often used to write messages on trees, and Morice published a newspaper in syllabics which was in print from 1891 to 1894. Some transcriptions of Latin and English have been recorded as well. Its usage began to decline around 1920, when the Carrier language was banned from the local schools. In liturgical publications, such as prayer books, the Carrier language became written in a non-standard form of the
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 th ...
, which used many English sound values, such as for and for . The switch was rather abrupt, to the point that parents would write in syllabics and their children would write in the alphabet, and neither could understand the other's writing.
In the 1960s, the ''Carrier Linguistic Committee'' (CLC) in
Fort St. James
Fort St. James is a district municipality and former fur trading post in northern central British Columbia, Canada. It is located on the south-eastern shore of Stuart Lake in the Omineca Country, at the northern terminus of Highway 27, which con ...
created a standardized form of the Latin alphabet for usage in the Carrier language. This is now the preferred form of writing the language, although Carrier syllabics is still often seen as more authentic to the culture.
Description
Carrier syllabics is designed so that syllables which begin with the same consonant have the same basic form. Depending on the following vowel, this form may be rotated, flipped, or a
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
may be added in the centre which is a short stroke for ⟨e⟩ and a centre dot for ⟨i⟩. There are special characters for consonants that do not immediately precede a tautosyllabic vowel, which is to say coda consonants, the first of a sequence of two onset consonants, and the nasals when syllabic preceding another consonant. The glottal stop is also written using a separate character, even when it immediately precedes a tautosyllabic vowel.
Carrier syllabics is written from left to right. Morice originally intended to have regular spacing between words; however, in practice, the letters were sporadically spaced, and the gaps between them did not often correlate to separate words. There was no formally defined
punctuation
Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. An ...
; Morice used the modern punctuation of the Latin alphabet.
Suffix or indicates long vowels. There is a final for , and an initial for French ''j''. There are no dedicated series for ; presumably the vowelless variants of are combined with the series, since only occurs finally. A variant of ᔆ is used for the laminal/apical distinction, but it is not supported by Unicode and in any case the rest of the series is missing.
Prefix marks proper names.
Unicode has interchanged the and series compared to Morice (1890): they have (ch) and (ts) rather than (ts) and (ch) . Some fonts have ᘨ ''dlu'' reversed: the
serif should be on the left, as in ''lu'', not the right as in ''tlu''.
Unicode
Carrier syllabics have been included in Unicode, along with related Canadian Aboriginal scripts, which use the same codes where they share glyphs.
External links
*
Yinka Déné Language InstituteDéné syllabics– ''history and description of Déné (Carrier) syllabics''
*
Yinka Déné Language Institute- ''Web page that transliterates between the syllabics and the Carrier Linguistic Committee Roman writing systems''
*Omniglot.com
Carrier syllabary (Déné syllabics) ᑐᑊᘁᗕᑋᗸ– ''description of the Carrier syllabary, including charts and images''
*
William Poser, William J. PoserDʌlk'ʷahke: the first Carrier writing system 25 February 2003 – ''detailed history of the syllabary, with photographs of inscriptions''
*
William Poser, William J. Poser: Introduction to the Carrier Syllabics. ''A textbook with sample readings from real texts.'' Available from Lulu.
*Languagegeek.com
Athabaskan syllabics keyboard layoutsan
Carrier reading-book
by Rev. A.G. Morice, O.M.I. = ᗫᐧ ᑐᔆᘼᔆ ᐅᙨᑐᑊᐧᐈᑋ * ᘇᘀᙆᘬ ᐈᐪ ᗫᑊ-ᘉᘦᔆ ᗗᒡ ᘇᐪ ᐅᘐᐣᘧ. 2nd edition, 1894
Carrier prayer-book
= ᑐᔆᘼᔆ ᐁᘁᗒᐪ ᗟᘇᙆᑐᘬ ( IPA: dʌstlʼʌs ukʷʼʌt tenazdʌdli). 1st edition, 1901
S̲aik'uz̲ Carrier dictionary
{{list of writing systems
Dakelh
Canadian Aboriginal syllabics