Cree syllabary

The Cree syllabary was developed as a writing system for the Cree language in the mid-1800s by James Evans. Originally, he had tried to develop a writing system for the Cree language based on the Roman alphabet, but found this to be unsatisfactory. He then created a syllabary based on his earlier syllabary developed for the Ojibwe language, which was, in part, based on Pitman's shorthand. The new syllabary was quite simple; it consists of just 12 basic shapes representing syllables, which can be rotated to distinguish between the different vowels and adorned with a diacritic dot to distinguish vowel lengths. This was so easy to learn that it caught on quickly, leading to an incredibly high literacy rate among the Cree and adaptations of the script to be used to write native languages all over Canada, including Athabaskan languages, Inuktitut, and others. Some of these languages have changed to a Roman orthography, but many still use the syllabary today.

External Links

• The Cree Syllabary
• Canadian Aboriginal Languages, Fonts, and Keyboards

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