Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics
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Canadian Aboriginal syllabic writing (often "syllabics" for short) is a family of abugidas used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Athabaskan, and Inuit language families.
Canadian syllabics are presently used to write all of the Cree dialects from Naskapi (spoken in Quebec) to the Rocky Mountains, including Eastern Cree, James Bay Cree, Swampy Cree and Plains Cree. Syllabics are also used to write other Algonquian languages, such as the major Ojibwe dialects in Western Canada and Blackfoot, and to write Inuktitut in the eastern Canadian arctic. Among Athabaskan languages, syllabics have been used to write Dakelh (Carrier), Chipewyan, Slavey, Tli Cho (Dogrib), Tasttine (Beaver). These native nations are found across Canada, in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories, Ontario, Quebec and Nunavut. Syllabics are occasionally used in the United States by Native communities that straddle the border, but are principally a Canadian phenomenon.
The bulk of the characters used by this writing system are encoded into the Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics character table as part of the Unicode standard. This page will use Unicode characters that may only be readable with an appropriate font.
Contents |
[edit] History
| History of the Alphabet |
|---|
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Middle Bronze Age 19–15th c. BC
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| Meroitic 3rd c. BC |
| Hangul 1443 |
| Zhuyin 1913 |
| Complete genealogy |
Some Sources claim that this writing system is a native invention. Cree legend in particular claims it was a divine gift given to two different Cree elders on opposite sides of Canada. However, with the apparent lack of preserved written material in syllabics before 1840, the well-documented history of partially missionary driven expansion of syllabic writing, and its resemblance to Pitman shorthand, weigh favorably against this conclusion. Those opposed to this missionary influence theory state that;
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- "A few North American tribes do have traditions of literacy which they claim predate Columbus, however, and coincidentally enough, the writing systems in those tribes are drastically different from European languages--pictographs in the case of Mi'kmaq, and a syllabary with rotating vowels in the case of Ojibway and Cree. It's theoretically possible that those tribes just happened to have been visited by very creative, iconoclastic missionaries, but it's more likely that the missionaries simply recorded and adapted an existing Native American writing system to serve their purposes (teaching Indians prayers, primarily.)"Quote Source
In 1827, James Evans, a missionary from Kingston upon Hull, UK, was placed in charge of the Wesleyan mission at Rice Lake, Ontario. Here, he began to learn the eastern Ojibwe language spoken in the area and to construct a Roman alphabet writing system 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. 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 integration into European colonists' society.
Evans continued to use his Ojibwe writing scheme in his work in Ontario. However, his students appear to have had conceptual difficulties working with the same alphabet for two different languages with very different sounds. Furthermore, the structure of the Ojibwe language made most words quite long when spelled with Roman letters, and Evans himself found this approach awkward.
In 1840, Evans was relocated to Norway House in northern Manitoba. Here, he began learning the local Swampy Cree dialect. Around this period, he acquired familiarity with the Pitman shorthand writing system, which had first been published only a few years earlier in 1837.
The Swampy Cree language, which had only eight consonants and four basic vowels (which could be either long or short) seemed to readily fit into the Pitman scheme. Like Ojibwe — to which it was quite closely related — its basic structure produced long words with many syllables, and a shorthand style writing system was less awkward for his students there.
Evans devised a system consisting of a basic form to represent a syllable that did not begin with a consonant, eight basic forms that represented the phonological consonants of the Swampy Cree language, and one basic form that represented a consonantal cluster. Each form could be rotated or flipped over to indicate which of the four vowels followed it. This produced a syllabary of 40 distinct characters, which, apart from vowel length, could represent the Swampy Cree language. He indicated vowel length initially using lighter and heavier lines — a common feature of Pitman shorthand — but this proved awkward in print, and the early versions of the syllabary use broken lines to indicate long vowels and complete lines for short ones. Later, he used a dot above a syllable to indicate length, which is also the present day practice. In addition to these 40 distinct characters, he had 11 forms that represented a consonant-alone syllable, of which 8 were single-consonant values found in Swampy Cree language, 1 consonant cluster typically found in Swampy Cree locative words, and 2 consonants not found in the Swampy Cree language.
The local Cree community quickly took to this new writing scheme. Cree people began to use it 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 that he was familiar with. 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 and new type to publish materials in this writing system. Here, he began to face resistance from colonial and European authorities. The Hudson Bay Company, 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, the Anglican bishop of Ruperts Land reported that "a few of the Indians can 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, and in 1861 — fifteen years after Evans had died — the British and Foreign Bible Society published a Bible in Cree syllabics. By then, both Protestant and Catholic missionaries were using and actively propagating syllabic writing.
Missionary work in the 1850s and 1860s spread syllabics to western Canadian Ojibwe dialects (Plains Ojibwe and Saulteaux), but it was not often used over the border by Ojibwe in the United States. Missionaries who had learned Evans’ system spread it east across Ontario and into Quebec, reaching all Cree language areas as far east as the Naskapi. Attikamekw, Montagnais and Innu people in eastern Quebec and Labrador use Roman alphabet writing schemes.
In 1856, John Horden, an Anglican missionary at Moose Factory, Ontario, who adapted syllabics to the local James Bay Cree dialect, met a group of Inuit from the region of Grande Rivière de la Baleine in northern Quebec. They were very interested in adapting Cree syllabics to their language. He prepared a few based on their pronunciation of Inuktitut, 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 hired Edmund Peck to work full time in their mission at Great Whale River, teaching syllabics to the Inuit and translating materials into syllabics. It is his work across the arctic which is usually credited with the establishment of syllabics among the Inuit. With the support of both Anglican and Catholic 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, invented a number of new forms to write the Blackfoot language.
French Roman Catholic missionaries were the primary force for expanding syllabics to Athabaskan languages in the late 1800s. The Oblate missionary order was particularly active in using syllabics in missionary work. Oblate father Adrien-Gabriel Morice adapted syllabics to Dakelh, inventing a large number of new basic characters to support the radically more complicated phonetics of Athabaskan languages. Father Émile Petitot developed syllabic schemes for many of the Athabaskan languages of the Northwest Territories, including Slavey and Chipewyan.
[edit] Basic principles
Canadian syllabic writing schemes are for the most part abugidas, where consonants are always marked in a manner which implies a specific vowel. Each consonant has a basic shape which is rotated or flipped over to indicate which vowel follows it. In Cree, for example, the unvoiced labial plosive consonant /p/ is indicated by a chevron shape: "ᐱ". By itself, "ᐱ" indicates the syllable /pi/. Turned to point downwards - "ᐯ" - it indicates /pe/. Pointing to the left "ᐸ", it is /pa/, and to the right - "ᐳ" - /po/.
This general pattern is largely common to all Canadian syllabics schemes. With symmetric characters, pointing upward indicates /i/, downward /e/, left /a/ and right /o/. The actual vowels represented may vary considerably between languages, but they have generally been made to approximate this Cree-based usage.
For asymmetric characters, the basic form must be flipped over to indicate a vowel. The nasal consonant /n/ for instance. "ᓀ" /ne/ contrasts with "ᓂ" /ni/, "ᓄ" /no/, and "ᓇ" /na/. Asymmetric forms generally follow the rule that /i/ and /e/ are reflections of each other in a mirror held vertically and /a/ and /o/ contrast in the same way, while /e/ and /o/ are reflections in a mirror held horizontally and /a/ and /i/ contrast the same way.
When a syllable does not begin with a consonant, a triangle - "ᐃ" - is used to indicate the vowel. Because the triangle is a symmetric form, it is rotated to distinguish between vowels: "ᐁ" /e/, "ᐃ" /i/, "ᐅ" /o/ and "ᐊ" /a/. All syllabics-based writing systems except Blackfoot use the triangle character to indicate syllables without initial consonants.
The original form of Canadian syllabics had nine basic shapes, reflecting the phonology of the Swampy Cree dialect for which it was originally devised. There were separate symbols for final consonants, as well as /x, w/, which only occurred finally, and /h, r, l/, which were only consonants.
| Syllable | Final | Swampy Cree | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ᐊ | /a/ | ||
| ᐸ | ᑊ | /p/ | |
| ᑕ | ᐟ | /t/ | |
| ᑲ | ᐠ | /k/ | |
| ᒐ | ᐨ | /ts/ | ("c" in the Latin alphabet) |
| ᒪ | ᒼ | /m/ | |
| ᓇ | ᐣ | /n/ | |
| ᓴ | ᐢ | /s/ | |
| ᔭ | ᐧ | /j/ | ("y" in the Latin alphabet) |
These forms are not all present in all Canadian syllabics schemes, however they are the ones found in the largest number of them. In most languages, they represent sounds which in some sense resemble their Swampy Cree values.
In Inuktitut, most Algonquian languages and some Athabaskan languages, vowel length is phonologically important and is generally indicated by placing a dot above the character. Thus "ᐊ" /a/ contrasts with "ᐋ" /aː/ and "ᒥ" /mi/ contrasts with "ᒦ" /miː/. However, writers do not always indicate length, or do not do so consistently.
Syllables that end with a consonant are indicated by the placement of a small character after and usually slightly above the character. These final characters vary significantly across languages, but are most often a small version of the /a/ version of the basic consonant form. Thus "ᐊᒃ" is /ak/ in many syllabics-using languages, and "ᓴᑉ" is /sap/.
[edit] Vocabulary of Canadian Syllabics
[edit] Syllables
The main characters - consonant-vowel combinations or vowels alone - are usually called “syllables.” They may not in fact form syllables. When a syllable - in the linguistic sense - ends in a consonant and the next one does not begin with a consonant, the first syllable may be written as if it had no final consonant and the second one as if it starts with a consonant. For example, the Plains Cree word "pīhc-āyihk", meaning “indoors” has “pīhc” as its first syllable, and “ā” as its second one, but will probably be written as "ᐲᐦᒑᔨᕽ" - "pīh-cā-yihk".
In other cases, a syllable may in fact represent a consonant by itself. In Plains Cree, the word "ᑖᓂᓯ" - "tānisi" ("hello" or "how are you?") - is written as if it has three syllables. Because the first syllable of this word has the stress and the syllable that follows it is a short /i/ syllable, the vowel is dropped. As a result, this word is pronounced "tānsi" with only two syllables.
Syllabisation is important to determining stress in Algonquian languages, and vice-versa. So, this ambiguity in syllabics is relatively important in Algonquian languages.
[edit] Finals
Smaller marks placed after and usually above syllables to indicate consonants following vowels are called "finals." However, some finals are used in front of syllables. The Cree phoneme /h/ begins a very small number of function words like "ᐦᐋᐤ" - "hāw". In those cases, the final "ᐦ" in fact precedes the syllable.
Furthermore, in some of the Athabaskan languages that use syllabics, finals sometimes appear in the middle behind a syllable, after and below a syllable, or even before and at the midline of a syllable. Chipewyan and Slavey use the final "ᐟ" before syllables and lowered to the midline to indicate the complex consontant cluser /dl/ at the beginning of a syllable. Chipewyan also lowers the final "ᐟ" to the baseline after a syllable to indicate some final consonants.
However, the Inuktitut syllables "ᕿ", "ᖁ", "ᖃ", "ᖏ", "ᖑ", "ᖓ" and the Naskapi syllables "ᔌ", "ᔍ", "ᔎ" and "ᔏ" should not be mistaken for syllables preceded by finals. The use of a small preceding character here is intended to extend syllabics to novel languages and to compensate for the linguistic inadequacies of the early forms of syllabics. The early developers of Inuktitut syllabics were English speakers who could not clearly distinguish between the Inuktitut /k/ sound and the glottal consonant /q/, and did not adequately recognise the difference between the /n/ and /ŋ/ sounds. Naskapi, unlike other Cree variants, has a small number of syllables that start with complex consonant clusters - /spwa/, /stwa/, /skwa/ and /stswa/ - which must be treated separately from the rest of the syllabary. Although the glyphs for these syllables have two parts, each is encoded into the Unicode standard as a single character.
[edit] Diacritics
Other marks placed above or beside the syllable are generally called "diacritics". This includes the dot placed above syllables to indicate long vowels, but may include other possibilities. In western Cree dialects, the placement of the semi-vowel /w/ between the initial consonant and vowel of a syllable is indicated by a dot after a syllable. This is considered a diacritic, not a final. Nonetheless, syllables marked for /w/ are encoded as single characters in Unicode.
Other diacritics used by various syllabics-using languages include a circle above a syllable, two dots placed before a syllable, and a variety of other marks. Diacritics used in syllabics may or may not be separately encoded into Unicode. There is no systematic way to distinguish elements which are parts of syllables from diacritics, or diacritics from finals, and academic discussions of syllabics are often inconsistent in their terminology.
[edit] Points
The diacritic mark used to indicate vowel length is often referred to as a point. Syllabics users do not always consistently mark vowel length. A text with all the vowel lengths marked is called a pointed text.
[edit] Series
The word "series" is generally used to discuss either a set of syllables with the same vowel or a set with the same initial consonant. Thus, the /n/-series are the syllables that all have /n/ as their initial consonant, and the /o/-series in Cree means the syllables that have /o/ as their vowel regardless of their initial consonant.
[edit] Variations
The vast differences between the Athabaskan, Inuit and Algonquian languages ensures that the syllabics used to write them also vary drastically. In the main, we can distinguish four major different variants of Canadian syllabics: Algonquian, Inuktitut, Blackfoot, and Athabaskan. Each reflects a historical expansion of the writing system. More information may be available on individual pages for each language.
[edit] Algonquian
The various Cree and Ojibwe dialects were the original languages for which syllabics were designed and they are the closest to the original pattern described by James Evans. Different Cree and Ojibwe dialects have slightly different consonants and vowels, but where two dialects share a sound, they generally have the same syllable for it. Where they do not, a new syllable may have been invented or adapted from a different one. Furthermore, several Cree dialects have only three basic vowels instead of two - the /e/-series has merged with the /i/-series in some places - and thus use only three of the four orientations for syllables.
Where Algonquian languages vary most in their use of syllabics is in the finals and diacritics. Syllabics finals break into roughly two groups: the east variety and west variety. All Ojibwe dialects fall into the east category, as do the Cree dialects used east of the Manitoba-Ontario border. Cree dialects used in the western provinces use the western finals.
| Sound | West Final | East Final |
|---|---|---|
| p | ᑊ | ᑉ |
| t | ᐟ | ᑦ |
| k | ᐠ | ᒃ |
| ts | ᐨ | ᒡ |
| m | ᒼ | ᒻ |
| n | ᐣ | ᓐ |
| s | ᐢ | ᔅ |
| j | ᐩ | ᔾ |
The east-west distinction in writing also affects the diacritic used to mark /w/. In eastern dialects, the dot is placed before the syllable, and in western dialects it is placed after. Thus, the western Cree syllable "ᒷ" is equivalent to the eastern Cree "ᒶ" - both are pronounced /mwa/.
Although in most other respects Naskapi falls into the eastern Cree category, it does not mark vowel length at all and uses two dots, either placed above or before or above and slightly to the right of syllables, to indicate a bilabial semi-vowel in the syllable: "ᐖ" /wo/, "ᐛ" /wa/, "ᑥ" /twa/, "ᒂ" /kwa/, "ᒠ" /tswa/, "ᒺ" /mwa/, "ᓏ" /nwa/, "ᔄ" /swa/, "ᔽ" /jwa/.
The western syllabics conventions are closer to the original form devised by James Evans than eastern Cree forms. The western finals in particular show the influence of Pitman shorthand on his work.
See also:
[edit] Inuktitut
Syllabics are only used to write the Inuktitut dialects of Nunavut (except for the extreme west, including Kugluktuk and Cambridge Bay) and Nunavik in northern Quebec. In other Inuit areas, various Roman alphabet-based schemes are used.
Inuktitut has only three basic vowels, and thus only needs the /a/-, /i/- and /u/-series positions from Cree. However, Inuktitut has far more distinct consonants than Cree. In its most standardised modern form, the language is written with 15 basic consonant forms. Its finals are similar to the eastern Cree finals used in the part of Quebec where syllabics were first adapted to Inuktitut.
Within Inuktitut, there has been some variation in syllabics usage. In the early years, Roman Catholic and Anglican missionaries used slightly different syllabaries. 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 the syllabary itself.
Originally the Cree /e/-series vowel position was used in Inuktitut to indicate the common diphthong /ai/, but this was officially dropped in the 1960s so that Inuktitut wouldn’t have more characters than could be moulded onto an IBM Selectric typewriter ball. The diphthong was written using an /a/-series syllable followed by "ᐃ". Recently the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami has decided to restore the /ai/-series; however, it is not clear that this decision will have an impact on official or educational use of Inuktitut.
See Also: Inuktitut syllabics
[edit] Blackfoot
The Blackfoot syllabary is quite different from the Algonquian and Inuktitut versions of the writing system. It has nine basic consonant forms, only two of which are identical to their Cree equivalents. Although the syllabary uses all four vowel positions, Blackfoot has only three distinct vowels.
See Also: Blackfoot syllabics
[edit] Athabaskan
Athabaskan syllabic writing systems were developed in the late 1800s by French Roman Catholic missionaries who adapted this originally Protestant writing scheme to languages radically different from the Algonquian languages. Most Athabaskan languages have more than four distinct vowels, and all have many distinct consonants. This has meant the invention of a number of new consonant forms.
In Dakelh syllabics, only one consonant series - the series for vowels alone - resembles the original Cree form. In order to accommodate 6 different vowels, Dakelh use all four vowel orientations and indicate the two additional vowels by placing a dot or a horizontal line into the rightward pointing form. Thus, the vowel-only series in Dakelh is: ᐊ /a/, ᐅ /ʌ/, ᐈ /e/, ᐉ /i/, ᐃ /o/, and ᐁ /u/.
The other Athabaskan languages that use syllabics have schemes that bear a closer resemblance to Algonquian syllabics, although they too have a number of consonant forms unique to Athabaskan languages.
See Also:
- Dakelh syllabics
- Slavey syllabics
- Chipewyan syllabics
[edit] Current usage
At present, Canadian syllabics seems reasonably secure within the Cree and Inuit communities, somewhat more at risk among the Ojibwe, seriously endangered for Athabaskan languages and Blackfoot.
In Nunavut and Nunavik, Inuktitut syllabics have official status. In Nunavut, laws, legislative debates and many other government documents must be published in Inuktitut in both syllabics and Roman alphabet form. 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 scheme.
Within the Cree and Ojibwe language communities, the situation is less confident.
Ojibwe speakers in the US have never been heavy users of either Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics or the Great Lakes Aboriginal Syllabics 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 USA 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.
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.
Blackfoot syllabics have, for all intents and purposes, disappeared. Present day Blackfoot speakers use a Roman alphabet writing scheme, and very few Blackfoot can still read - much less write - the syllabic system.
Among the Athabaskan languages with syllabic writing schemes, none is in vigorous use. In some cases, the languages they represent are on the brink of extinction. In other cases, syllabics have been replaced by Roman letters. Many people - linguists and speakers of Athabaskan languages alike - feel that these languages are ill-suited to syllabic writing. The government of the Northhwest 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 Roman 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 Roman alphabet writing scheme was better both for linguistic reasons and to reduce the cost of supporting alternative writing schemes.
At present, at least for Inuktitut and Algonquian languages, Canadian government at least 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 there are limitations to syllabic writing, and in many cases a Roman alphabet scheme would be less costly to use and quite possibly easier to learn, 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 link Roman letters to linguistic assimilation. As Canada redefines itself in terms of ethnolinguistic diversity and multiculturalism, it is increasingly difficult to justify neglecting the only writing system that is truly unique to Canada.
[edit] Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics
A reasonably complete set of Canadian syllabics characters is encoded into the Unicode standard under the name Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics. It covers the range from U+1400 to U+167F. See Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics character table for a complete list.
[edit] Origins
Evans was familiar with British shorthand, presumably Samuel Taylor's Universal Stenography, before the publication of Pitman shorthand. He was also acquainted with Devanagari. Both writing systems influenced the design of the Cree script.
The use of rotation to change vowels is unique to the Cree script and its descendants, but had its antecedents in shorthand. Pitman shorthand for example used rotation to change place of articulation: plosives p t ch k, nasals m n, and fricatives h s sh f th were all related through rotation.
The Cree final consonants p t c k m n s and y (which Evans called "final i") are clearly derived from Pitman shorthand. The Cree straight-line symbols ᑊ ᐟ ᐨ ᐠ p t c k are rotated 45° from Pitman ᐠ ᑊ ᐟ ᐨ but keep their relative orientations intact; the semicircle symbols ᒼ ᐣ ᐢ m n s are rotated 90° from Pitman ᐢ ᓑ ᐣ. The Cree "final i" was originally a dot, the symbol for i in Pitman. The final kh is ᕽ, a small version of the logogram for Christ, from Greek Χ kh.
None of the Cree syllabic glyphs pa ta ca ka ma na sa ya, nor the incidental consonants r l w h, bear any particular resemblance to either Pitman or Taylor shorthand. All of them, however, resemble the combining forms of cursive Devanagari (with the right-side bar removed, as happens in ligatures, and the top bar removed, as often happens in handwriting): Devanagari m = Cree ma, for example. 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. Because Cree consonants can be either voiced or voiceless, each corresponds to two Devanagari letters, and Cree ka/ga, for example, resembles Devanagari g rather than k. The apparent correspondences then are:
-
Devanagari combining form
(with ठ)Cree value Akshara प p प्ठ ᐸ pa/ba ट ţ or ढ d — ᑕ ta/da ज j ज्ठ ᒐ cha/ja ग g ग्ठ ᑯ ko/go म m म्ठ ᒪ ma न n न्ठ ᓂ ne स s स्ठ ᓴ sa य y य्ठ ᔪ yo Incidental consonants ल l ल्ठ ᓬ l र r — ᕒ r व v/w व्ठ ᐤ final w ः h ठः ᐦ h
However, with such simple geometric shapes it is always possible that these resemblances are accidental, and that the true origins of Cree lie elsewhere, or were pure invention.
[edit] References
- ^ Cree legend describing origins of syllabics
- ^ An early syllabary from Evans
- ^ Description of Evans' manner of casting type at the Rossville mission
- ^ Methodist Bible in Cree Syllabics
