An image showing a selection of symbols from the Cherokee and Japanese Hiragana syllabries

Syllabaries

A syllabary is a phonetic writing system consisting of symbols representing syllables. A syllable is often made up of a consonant plus a vowel or a single vowel.

The illustration on the right shows a selection of symbols from the Cherokee (on the left) and Japanese Hiragana (on the right) syllabaries

It could be argued that the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics used to write Cree, and other languages, are a abugida or syllabic alphabet, however they are classified as a 'featural syllabary' by Unicode.

Syllabaries currently in use

Cherokee (Tsalagi)	Cree syllabics
Hiragana (Japanese)	Katakana (Japanese)
Yi (Nosu)	Vai

Syllabaries used a little or being revived

Bamum

Dunging (Iban)

Syllabaries that are no longer used

Afaka	Caroline Island Script
Celtiberian	Cypriot
Eskayan	Iberian
Kpelle	Loma
Mende (Kikakui)	Nüshu
Nwagụ Aneke	Yugtun

Please note

transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are used extensively throughout this website. The IPA transcriptions are the letters and other symbols which appear in square bracketts, like this [b], [p]. etc.

You can learn about the IPA and phonetics at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet
http://www.nativlang.com/linguistics/ipa-pronunciation-lessons.php
http://cmed.faculty.ku.edu/acdapres/rabeipa/index.html
https://linguischtick.wordpress.com/ipa/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBo5LAVYtX4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2frVKeVTKU

Page last modified: 04.07.25

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