Intro

To be honest, the topic of this video/article is also what I wanted to share a few months ago but it only lay on my notebook. Anyway, this time we can talk about this topic, a very special and mysterious script system from the Arctic.

The Languages

This writing system’s name is Canadian Aboriginal syllabics or Canadian syllabic writing and syllabics for short. I believe many people, of course including me, at first I knew this writing system was from the Inuktitut syllabics and for a very long time I always called it the “Inuit script” but actually this calling is very partial. Because there is not only one language using the syllabics to write their languages, such as Cree language and Inuit language is just one among those languages. So based on this situation, the Canadian syllabic writing is a kind of cross-lingual script, which is like the Latin script which was used by the European languages and other languages or the Chinese character system that was used by the languages in the Sinosphere.

Creator and Inspiration

So who created this writing system? And we have to mention this man, James Evans. He was an English-Canadian missionary and was born in England. When he was 21 years old, he emigrated with his parents to Lower Canada in 1822. Although he was a missionary, it seemed his passion was in the language. When he worked as a minister in Wesleyan Methodist, he not only picked up the Ojibwe language but also dedicated to develop the Ojibwe and Cree scripts that would be easy to learn.

Evans was an amateur linguist but he had enough linguistic knowledge and he would like to learn the local languages and he could find the distinction of the languages, like the languages always have 4 vowels. So this is why he was able to create a new and practical writing system in the 1840s. Basically the inspiration of creating the new writing system is from the Devanagari script and Pitman shorthand. By the way, when he developed the syllabics, the Pitman shorthand was a very new thing because it was published in 1837. So he should be in the first group of learners of Pitman shorthand. Plus, this is not the first time we mention the Pitman shorthand. In the Shavian Alphabet video/article, we also mentioned it.

This Script Can Rotate

The syllabics should be an original writing system. But this new writing system was easy to learn and quickly adopted by the local Cree community and even was recorded in Cree oral traditions. Cree people began to use it to write messages on tree bark using burnt sticks.

The syllabics is a kind of featural abugida script and is written from left to right. Now the google keyboard can support 3 syllabics keyboards, the Ojibwe keyboard, Cree keyboard and Inuktitut keyboard.

When we focus on the syllabics keyboard, we can find that it’s like the letters can rotate. 4 letters can combine into a series of letters and respectively can point up, down, left and right. So this is the feature of syllabics. Every direction can refer to a vowel and 4 directions mean 4 vowels. So only one letter can express a syllable.

If we bring this concept into Latin script, it will be like this.

The normal direction of B means B plus i.

Turning left, it means B plus a.

Turning right, it means B plus o.

Turning 180 degrees, it means B plus e.

Influence

After Evans created the syllabics, more and more native people started to use it to write their languages. Missionary work in the 1850s and 1860s spread syllabics to western Canadian Ojibwe dialects. In the early part of the 20th century, with the support of missionary societies, the Inuit were propagating syllabics themselves, which were modified and localized syllabics by Inuit in order to match the Inuit language.

In addition, there was even seemingly interesting information. In the 1850s, the syllabic made the Cree people’s rate of literacy was greater than that of English and French Canadians. Therefore in 1861, fifteen years after Evans had died, the societies also noticed it, so the British and Foreign Bible Society published a Bible in Cree syllabics.