The Cherokee Syllabary Carrie Clarady University of Maryland Center for Advanced Study of Language

Writing Systems  Three major categories Logographic Syllabic Alphabetic/segmental  These categories are not firm and systems can change and evolve across these major categories

Writing Systems  Logographic/Ideographic Oldest forms of writing Not a pure system – usually has some kind of phonetic or sound information bound up in the characters Can extend through the “rebus” principle – use homophony of parts to construct new representations

Writing Systems  Alphabetic 1 character = 1 sound – sort of Abjads – no vowels Abugidas – inherent vowels Easily adaptable for use in other languages and also for new coinages and loanwords

Writing Systems  Syllabaries Each syllable has its own unique symbol Best suited for languages with very simple syllable structures Almost always CV, and almost always used for CV languages

Writing Systems  Languages and their writing systems are not the same thing!  But that doesn’t mean they aren’t related to each other, either

Languages in the Americas  Pre-European – thousands of languages and hundreds of language families  Extinction rates – maybe half left in N. America  Continued preservation efforts  It is estimated that only twenty N. American indigenous languages will remain viable by the year 2050.

Cherokee  One of around 300 languages native to North America  Part of the Iroquoian family of languages  Polysynthetic – each word has a lot of parts  ‘Cherokee’ – eastern band. More common is ‘Tsalagi’, from the west

The sound system of Cherokee  Small phonemic inventory 12 consonants 6 vowels – long and short variants, including schwa  Tone is distinctive  Syllable structure – open syllables, CV overwhelmingly common, extrasyllabic /s/

The Cherokee syllabary  The story of Sequoyah  1809 – 1819 – active development  Script and language traveled west with the Cherokee

The Cherokee syllabary  Structure – graphic, organization

The Cherokee syllabary  Code talkers – World War II Mostly Cree and Comanche, but some evidence of Cherokee used in the same way  Vai syllabary - Liberia

The Cherokee syllabary  Modern use in print and online  Mostly used for heritage and folklore purposes now

Further resources  Cherokee.org  Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA)  Contact me: