Carrier syllabary
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Carrier syllabary | ||
|---|---|---|
| Type: | Abugida | |
| Languages: | Carrier (Dakelh) | |
| Created by | Adrien-Gabriel Morice | |
| Time period: | Created in 1885, with its usage fading around 1920 | |
| Parent writing systems: | artificial script Carrier syllabary |
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| Sister writing systems: | Cree syllabary, which also influenced the design of the letters | |
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| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
The Carrier syllabary, also known as Déné syllabics, is a script created by Adrien-Gabriel Morice for use in the Carrier language. It was created as a modfication to Cree syllabics, and is thus one of the writing systems in Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics. The writing system is an abugida, and as such has related character forms for syllables containing similar vowels and consonants.
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[edit] History
The Dakelh people 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 the syllabary which was in print from 1891 to 1894. Some transcriptions of Latin and English in the syllabary 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, which used many English sound values, such as <oo> for /u/ and <u> for /ʌ/. The switch was rather abrupt, to the point that parents would write in the syllabary and their children would write in the alphabet, and neither could understand the other's writing.
In the 1960s, the Carrier Linguistic Committee in Fort St. James 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 the Carrier syllabary is still often seen as more "authentic" to the culture.
[edit] Description
The Carrier syllabary is an abugida, so syllables which begin with the same consonant have similar forms. For each consonant, a base symbol exists. Depending on the following vowel, the symbol may be rotated, flipped, or a small marking may be added in the center of the symbol. Special forms exist for consonants which could occur at the end of a syllable.
The Carrier syllabary 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; Morice used the modern punctuation of the Latin alphabet.
[edit] Unicode
The Carrier syllabary has been encoded into Unicode, along with other Canadian Aboriginal syllabic glyphs. However, it holds no definite range, and the symbols are placed in the same range as other Canadian syllabaries.
