Canadian syllabics | |
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![]() Syllable inventory of Ojibwe syllabics | |
Script type | Featural |
Time period | 1840s–present |
Direction | Left-to-right ![]() |
Languages | |
Related scripts | |
Parent systems | |
Child systems | |
ISO 15924 | |
ISO 15924 | Cans (440), Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics |
Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Canadian Aboriginal |
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Indigenous peoples in Canada |
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Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Canadian syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of writing systems used in a number of indigenous Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and (formerly) Athabaskan language families. These languages had no formal writing system previously. They are valued for their distinctiveness from the Latin script and for the ease with which literacy can be achieved.[1] For instance, by the late 19th century the Cree had achieved what may have been one of the highest rates of literacy in the world.[2] Syllabics are an abugida, where glyphs represent consonant–vowel pairs, determined by the rotation of the glyphs. They derive from the work of linguist and missionary James Evans.
Canadian syllabics are currently used to write all of the Cree languages from including Eastern Cree, Plains Cree, Swampy Cree, Woods Cree, and Naskapi. They are also used to write Inuktitut in the Canadian Arctic; there they are co-official with the Latin script in the territory of Nunavut. They are used regionally for the other large Canadian Algonquian language, Ojibwe, as well as for Blackfoot. Among the Athabaskan languages further to the west, syllabics have been used at one point or another to write Dakelh (Carrier), Chipewyan, Slavey, Tłı̨chǫ (Dogrib), and Dane-zaa (Beaver). Syllabics have occasionally been used in the United States by communities that straddle the border.
Nichols-1996
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Reports from the late nineteenth century say that virtually every adult Cree speaker was literate; even allowing for some exaggeration, Cree may have had one of the highest literacy rates in the world at the time.
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