| Cherokee | |
|---|---|
 Tsalagi ("Cherokee") written in the Cherokee syllabary | |
| Script type | |
Period | 1820s[1] – present[2] |
| Direction | Left-to-right  |
| Languages | Cherokee language |
| ISO 15924 | |
| ISO 15924 | Cher(445), Cherokee |
| Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Cherokee |
| |
| This article containsphonetic transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. For the distinction between[ ],/ / and ⟨ ⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. | |
| Part ofa series on the |
| Cherokee language |
|---|
 Sequoya with a tablet displaying the Cherokee writing system, which he invented. |
| History |
| Grammar |
TheCherokee syllabary (Cherokee:ᏣᎳᎩ ᏗᎪᏪᎶᏙᏗ,romanized: Tsalagi Digohwelodohdi) is asyllabary invented bySequoyah in the late 1810s and early 1820s to write theCherokee language. His creation of the syllabary is particularly noteworthy as he wasilliterate until its creation.[3] He first experimented withlogograms, but his system later developed into the syllabary. In his system, each symbol represents asyllable rather than a singlephoneme; the 85 (originally 86)[1] characters provide a suitable method for writing Cherokee. The letters resemble characters from other scripts, such asLatin,Greek,Cyrillic, andGlagolitic, but are not used to represent the same sounds.
Around 1809, impressed by the "talking leaves" of European written languages,Sequoyah began work to create a writing system for the Cherokee language. After attempting to create acharacter for each word, Sequoyah realized this would be too difficult and eventually created characters to represent syllables. He worked on the syllabary for twelve years before completion and dropped or modified most of the characters he originally created.
After the syllabary was completed in the early 1820s, it achieved almost instantaneous popularity and spread rapidly throughout Cherokee society.[4] By 1825, the majority of Cherokees could read and write in their newly developed orthography.[5]
Some of Sequoyah's most learned contemporaries immediately understood that the syllabary was a great invention. For example, whenAlbert Gallatin, a politician and trained linguist, saw a copy of Sequoyah's syllabary, he believed it was superior to the English alphabet in that literacy could be easily achieved for Cherokee at a time when only one-third of English-speaking people achieved the same goal.[6] He recognized that even though the Cherokee student must learn 85 characters instead of 26 for English, the Cherokee could read immediately after learning all the symbols. The Cherokee student could accomplish in a few weeks what students of English writing might require two years to achieve.[7]
In 1828, the order of the characters in a chart and the shapes of the characters were modified by Cherokee author and editorElias Boudinot to adapt the syllabary to printing presses.[8] The 86th character was dropped entirely.[9] Following these changes, the syllabary was adopted by theCherokee Phoenix newspaper, laterCherokee Advocate, followed by theCherokee Messenger, a bilingual paper printed inIndian Territory in the mid-19th century.[10]
In 1834,Samuel Worcester made changes to several characters in order to improve the readability of Cherokee text. Most notably, he inverted thedo character (Ꮩ) so that it could not be confused with thego character (Ꭺ).[11] Otherwise, the characters remained remarkably invariant until the advent of new typesetting technologies in the 20th century.[12]
In the 1960s, the Cherokee Phoenix Press began publishing literature in the Cherokee syllabary, including theCherokee Singing Book.[13] A Cherokee syllabary typewriter ball was developed for theIBM Selectric in the late 1970s. Computer fonts greatly expanded Cherokee writers' ability to publish in Cherokee. In 2010, a Cherokee keyboard cover was developed byRoy Boney, Jr. andJoseph Erb, facilitating more rapid typing in Cherokee. The keyboard cover is now used by students in theCherokee Nation Immersion School, where all coursework is written in syllabary.[8]
In August 2010, the Oconaluftee Institute for Cultural Arts inCherokee, North Carolina acquired aletterpress and had the Cherokee syllabary recast to begin printing one-of-a-kind fine art books and prints in syllabary.[14] Artists Jeff Marley andFrank Brannon completed a collaborative project on October 19, 2013, in which they printed using Cherokee syllabary type fromSouthwestern Community College in the print shop atNew Echota. This was the first time syllabary type has been used at New Echota since 1835.[15]
The syllabary is finding increasingly diverse usage today, from books, newspapers, and websites to the street signs ofTahlequah, Oklahoma, andCherokee, North Carolina. An increasing corpus of children's literature is printed in Cherokee to meet the needs of students in Cherokee language immersion schools in Oklahoma and North Carolina.[16]It featured on the 2023 USA quarter dollar commemoratingWilma Mankiller.
In the 1960s, evidence emerged suggesting that the Cherokee syllabary of North America provided a model for the design of theVai syllabary in Liberia.[17] The Vai syllabary emerged about 1832–33. This was at a time when American missionaries were working to use the Cherokee syllabary as a model for writing Liberian languages.[18] Another link appears to have been Cherokee who emigrated to Liberia after the invention of the Cherokee syllabary (which in its early years spread rapidly among the Cherokee) but before the inventions of the Vai syllabary. One such man, Austin Curtis, married into a prominentVai family and became an important Vai chief himself. It is perhaps not coincidence that the "inscription on a house" that drew the world's attention to the existence of the Vai script was in fact on the home of Curtis, a Cherokee.[19] There also appears to be a connection between an early form ofwritten Bassa and the earlier Cherokee syllabary.
The modern writing system consists of 85 characters, each representing a distinctsyllable. The first six characters represent isolated vowel syllables. Characters for combined consonant and vowel syllables then follow.
The charts below show the syllabary in recitation order, left to right, top to bottom, as arranged bySamuel Worcester, along with his commonly used transliterations.[20][21] He played a key role in the development of Cherokee printing from 1828 until his death in 1859. The Latin letter 'v' in the transcriptions, seen in the last column, represents the nasalmid-central vowel,/ə̃/.
| The chart below usesUnicode characters from theCherokee block. For an image alternative, seeFile:Cherokee Syllabary.svg. | |||||||||||
| Consonant | a | e | i | o | u | v [ə̃] | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ∅ | Ꭰ a [a] | Ꭱ e [e] | Ꭲ i [i] | Ꭳ o [o] | Ꭴ u [u̜] | Ꭵ v [ə̃] | |||||
| g / k | Ꭶ ga [ka] | Ꭷ ka [kʰa] | Ꭸ ge [ke] | Ꭹ gi [ki] | Ꭺ go [ko] | Ꭻ gu [ku̜] | Ꭼ gv [kə̃] | ||||
| h | Ꭽ ha [ha] | Ꭾ he [he] | Ꭿ hi [hi] | Ꮀ ho [ho] | Ꮁ hu [hu̜] | Ꮂ hv [hə̃] | |||||
| l | Ꮃ la [la] | Ꮄ le [le] | Ꮅ li [li] | Ꮆ lo [lo] | Ꮇ lu [lu̜] | Ꮈ lv [lə̃] | |||||
| m | Ꮉ ma [ma] | Ꮊ me [me] | Ꮋ mi [mi] | Ꮌ mo [mo] | Ꮍ mu [mu̜] | Ᏽ[i] mv [mə̃] | |||||
| n / hn | Ꮎ na [na] | Ꮏ hna [n̥a] | Ꮐ nah [nah] | Ꮑ ne [ne] | Ꮒ ni [ni] | Ꮓ no [no] | Ꮔ nu [nu̜] | Ꮕ nv [nə̃] | |||
| qu [kʷ] | Ꮖ qua [kʷa] | Ꮗ que [kʷe] | Ꮘ qui [kʷi] | Ꮙ quo [kʷo] | Ꮚ quu [kʷu̜] | Ꮛ quv [kʷə̃] | |||||
| s | Ꮝ s [s] | Ꮜ sa [sa] | Ꮞ se [se] | Ꮟ si [si] | Ꮠ so [so] | Ꮡ su [su̜] | Ꮢ sv [sə̃] | ||||
| d / t | Ꮣ da [ta] | Ꮤ ta [tʰa] | Ꮥ de [te] | Ꮦ te [tʰe] | Ꮧ di [ti] | Ꮨ ti [tʰi] | Ꮩ do [to] | Ꮪ du [tu̜] | Ꮫ dv [tə̃] | ||
| dl / tl [d͡ɮ] / [t͡ɬ] | Ꮬ dla [d͡ɮa] | Ꮭ tla [t͡ɬa] | Ꮮ tle [t͡ɬe] | Ꮯ tli [t͡ɬi] | Ꮰ tlo [t͡ɬo] | Ꮱ tlu [t͡ɬu̜] | Ꮲ tlv [t͡ɬə̃] | ||||
| ts [t͡s]~[d͡ʒ] | Ꮳ tsa [d͡ʒa] | Ꮴ tse [d͡ʒe] | Ꮵ tsi [d͡ʒi] | Ꮶ tso [d͡ʒo] | Ꮷ tsu [d͡ʒu̜] | Ꮸ tsv [d͡ʒə̃] | |||||
| w [ɰ] | Ꮹ wa [ɰa] | Ꮺ we [ɰe] | Ꮻ wi [ɰi] | Ꮼ wo [ɰo] | Ꮽ wu [ɰu̜] | Ꮾ wv [ɰə̃] | |||||
| y [j] | Ꮿ ya [ja] | Ᏸ ye [je] | Ᏹ yi [ji] | Ᏺ yo [jo] | Ᏻ yu [ju̜] | Ᏼ yv [jə̃] | |||||
Notes:
The Cherokee characterᏙ (do) has a different orientation in old documents, an upside-down letter V, flipped as compared to modern documents.[b]
There is also a handwritten cursive form of the syllabary;[26] notably, the handwritten glyphs bear little resemblance to the printed forms.
The phonetic values of these characters do not equate directly to those represented by the letters of the Latin script. Some characters represent two distinct phonetic values (actually heard as different syllables), while others may represent multiple variations of the same syllable.[27] Not allphonemic distinctions of the spoken language are represented:
As with some other writing systems, proficient speakers can distinguish words by context.
If alabial plosive appears in a borrowed word or name, it is written using thequ row. This/kw/ ~/p/ correspondence is a known linguistic phenomenon that exists elsewhere (cf.P-Celtic,Osco-Umbrian). Thel andtl rows are similarly used for borrowings containingr ortr/dr, respectively, ands (including withints) can represent /s/, /ʃ/, /z/, or /ʒ/, as indicated in the above wordjuunsdi̋.
There are two maincharacter orders for the Cherokee script. The usual order for Cherokee runs across the rows of the syllabary chart from left to right, top to bottom—this is the one used in the Unicode block. It has also been alphabetized based on the six columns of the syllabary chart from top to bottom, left to right.
Modern Cherokee generally usesArabic numerals. In the late 1820s, several years after the introduction and adoption of his syllabary, Sequoyah proposed a set of number signs for Cherokee; however, these were never adopted and never typeset.[28] In 2012, the Cherokee Language Consortium agreed to begin using Sequoyah's numerals in some instances.[29]
Sequoyah developed unique characters for 1 through 19, and then characters for the "tens" of 20 through 100. Additional symbols were used to note thousands and millions, and Sequoyah also used a final symbol to mark the end of a number.[28][30] The glyphs for 1 through 20 can be grouped into groups of five that have a visual similarity to each other (1–5, 6–10, 11–15, and 16–20).[31] The Cherokee Language Consortium has created an additional symbol for zero along with symbols for billions and trillions.[29] As of Unicode 13.0, Cherokee numerals are not encoded within Unicode.[32]
Sequoyah's proposednumeral system has been described as having a "ciphered-additive structure,"[30] using combinations of the characters for 1 through 9 with the characters for 20 through 100 to create larger numbers. For example, instead of writing 64, the Cherokee numerals for 60 and 4 (
) would be written together. To write 10 through 19, unique characters for each number are employed. For numbers larger than 100, the system takes on features of a multiplicative-additive system, with the digits for 1 through being placed before the hundred, thousand, or million sign to indicate large numbers;[30] for example, for 504, the Cherokee numerals for 5, 100, and 4 (
) would be written together.
Cherokee language classes typically begin with a transliteration of Cherokee into Roman letters, only later incorporating the syllabary. The Cherokee language classes offered throughHaskell Indian Nations University,Northeastern State University,[8] theUniversity of Oklahoma, theUniversity of Science and Arts of Oklahoma,Western Carolina University, theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the immersion elementary schools offered by the Cherokee Nation and theEastern Band of Cherokee Indians,[33] such asNew Kituwah Academy, all teach the syllabary. The fine arts degree program atSouthwestern Community College incorporates the syllabary in its printmaking classes.[14]
Cherokee was added to theUnicode standard in September 1999, with the release of version 3.0. The character repertoire was extended to include a complete set of lowercase Cherokee letters as well as the archaic character (Ᏽ).
On June 17, 2015, with the release of version 8.0, the Unicode Consortium encoded a lowercase version of the script and redefined Cherokee as abicameral script. Typists would often set Cherokee with two different point sizes so as to mark beginnings of sentences and given names (as in the Latin alphabet). Handwritten Cherokee also shows a difference in lower- and uppercase letters, such as descenders and ascenders.[34] Lowercase Cherokee has already been encoded in the fontEverson Mono.
The first Unicode block for Cherokee is U+13A0–U+13FF. It contains all 86 uppercase letters, together with six lowercase letters:
| Cherokee[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) | ||||||||||||||||
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
| U+13Ax | Ꭰ | Ꭱ | Ꭲ | Ꭳ | Ꭴ | Ꭵ | Ꭶ | Ꭷ | Ꭸ | Ꭹ | Ꭺ | Ꭻ | Ꭼ | Ꭽ | Ꭾ | Ꭿ |
| U+13Bx | Ꮀ | Ꮁ | Ꮂ | Ꮃ | Ꮄ | Ꮅ | Ꮆ | Ꮇ | Ꮈ | Ꮉ | Ꮊ | Ꮋ | Ꮌ | Ꮍ | Ꮎ | Ꮏ |
| U+13Cx | Ꮐ | Ꮑ | Ꮒ | Ꮓ | Ꮔ | Ꮕ | Ꮖ | Ꮗ | Ꮘ | Ꮙ | Ꮚ | Ꮛ | Ꮜ | Ꮝ | Ꮞ | Ꮟ |
| U+13Dx | Ꮠ | Ꮡ | Ꮢ | Ꮣ | Ꮤ | Ꮥ | Ꮦ | Ꮧ | Ꮨ | Ꮩ | Ꮪ | Ꮫ | Ꮬ | Ꮭ | Ꮮ | Ꮯ |
| U+13Ex | Ꮰ | Ꮱ | Ꮲ | Ꮳ | Ꮴ | Ꮵ | Ꮶ | Ꮷ | Ꮸ | Ꮹ | Ꮺ | Ꮻ | Ꮼ | Ꮽ | Ꮾ | Ꮿ |
| U+13Fx | Ᏸ | Ᏹ | Ᏺ | Ᏻ | Ᏼ | Ᏽ | ᏸ | ᏹ | ᏺ | ᏻ | ᏼ | ᏽ | ||||
| Notes | ||||||||||||||||
The Cherokee Supplement block is U+AB70–U+ABBF. It contains the remaining 80 lowercase letters.
| Cherokee Supplement[1] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) | ||||||||||||||||
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
| U+AB7x | ꭰ | ꭱ | ꭲ | ꭳ | ꭴ | ꭵ | ꭶ | ꭷ | ꭸ | ꭹ | ꭺ | ꭻ | ꭼ | ꭽ | ꭾ | ꭿ |
| U+AB8x | ꮀ | ꮁ | ꮂ | ꮃ | ꮄ | ꮅ | ꮆ | ꮇ | ꮈ | ꮉ | ꮊ | ꮋ | ꮌ | ꮍ | ꮎ | ꮏ |
| U+AB9x | ꮐ | ꮑ | ꮒ | ꮓ | ꮔ | ꮕ | ꮖ | ꮗ | ꮘ | ꮙ | ꮚ | ꮛ | ꮜ | ꮝ | ꮞ | ꮟ |
| U+ABAx | ꮠ | ꮡ | ꮢ | ꮣ | ꮤ | ꮥ | ꮦ | ꮧ | ꮨ | ꮩ | ꮪ | ꮫ | ꮬ | ꮭ | ꮮ | ꮯ |
| U+ABBx | ꮰ | ꮱ | ꮲ | ꮳ | ꮴ | ꮵ | ꮶ | ꮷ | ꮸ | ꮹ | ꮺ | ꮻ | ꮼ | ꮽ | ꮾ | ꮿ |
Notes
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A single Cherokee Unicode font, Plantagenet Cherokee, is supplied withmacOS, version 10.3 (Panther) and later.Windows Vista also includes a Cherokee font. Windows 10 replaced Plantagenet Cherokee withGadugi after the Cherokee language term for"working together".[35]
Several free Cherokee fonts are available including Digohweli, Donisiladv, andNoto Sans Cherokee. Some pan-Unicode fonts, such asCode2000,Everson Mono, andGNU FreeFont, include Cherokee characters. A commercial font, Phoreus Cherokee, published by TypeCulture, includes multiple weights and styles.[36]
