Солтүстік Америка халықтарының әліпбилері: 1840 жылғы жаңалықтар

Writing systems for indigenous North American languages created in 1840 CE

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. Syllabics are abugidas, where glyphs represent consonant vowel pairs. They derive from the work of James Evans. Canadian syllabics are currently used to write all of the Cree languages from Naskapi (spoken in Quebec) to the Rocky Mountains, including Eastern Cree, Woods Cree, Swampy Cree and Plains Cree. They are also used to write Inuktitut in the eastern 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, where they are obsolete. 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, but are principally a Canadian phenomenon.

Cree syllabics were created in a process that culminated in 1840 by James Evans, a missionary, probably in collaboration with Indigenous language experts. Evans formalized them for Swampy Cree and Ojibwe. Evans had been inspired by the success of Sequoyah's Cherokee syllabary after encountering problems with Latin based alphabets, and drew on his knowledge of Devanagari and Pitman shorthand. Canadian syllabics would in turn influence the Pollard script, which is used to write various Hmong Mien and Lolo Burmese languages. Other missionaries were reluctant to use it, but it was rapidly indigenized and spread to new communities before missionaries arrived. A conflicting account is recorded in Cree oral traditions, asserting that the script originated from Cree culture before 1840 (see § Cree oral traditions). Per these traditions, syllabics were the invention of Calling Badger, a Cree man. Legend states that Badger had died and returned from the spirit world to share the knowledge of writing with his people. Some scholars write that these legends were created after 1840. Cree scholar Winona Stevenson explores the possibility that the inspiration for Cree syllabics may have originated from a near death experience of mistanaskowêw (ᒥᐢᑕᓇᐢᑯᐍᐤ, Calling Badger – from mistanask ᒥᐢᑕᓇᐢᐠ 'badger' and wêw ᐁᐧᐤ 'voice/call'), a Cree. Stevenson references Fine Day cited in David G. Mandelbaum's The Plains Cree who states that he learned the syllabary from Strikes him on the back who learned it directly from mistanâskowêw. 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's 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, David Anderson, the Anglican bishop of Rupert's 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 (indeed, their rate of literacy was greater than that of English and French Canadians), 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 Latin alphabets. 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. His work across the Arctic 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 19th century. 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 scripts for many of the Athabaskan languages of the Northwest Territories, including Slavey and Chipewyan. Cree influenced the design of the Pollard script in China.

Cree oral traditions state that the script was gifted to the Cree through the spirit world, rather than being invented by a missionary. In the 1930s, Chief Fine Day of the Sweetgrass First Nation told Mandelbaum the following account: but abugidas, in which consonants are modified in order to indicate an associated vowel—in this case through a change in orientation (which is unique to Canadian syllabics). In Cree, for example, the consonant p has the shape of a chevron. In an upward orientation, ᐱ, it transcribes the syllable pi. Inverted, so that it points downwards, ᐯ, it transcribes pe. Pointing to the left, ᐸ, it is pa, and to the right, ᐳ, po. The consonant forms and the vowels so represented vary from language to language, but generally approximate their Cree origins.

At least two scripts derive from Cree syllabics, and share its principles, but have fundamentally different letter shapes or sound values.

Blackfoot, another Algonquian language, uses a syllabary developed in the 1880s that is quite different from the Cree and Inuktitut versions. Although borrowing from Cree the ideas of rotated and mirrored glyphs with final variants, most of the letter forms derive from the Latin script, with only some resembling Cree letters. Blackfoot has eight initial consonants, only two of which are identical in form to their Cree equivalents, se and ye (here only the vowels have changed). The other consonants were created by modifying letters of the Latin script to make the e series, or in three cases by taking Cree letters but reassigning them with new sound values according to which Latin letters they resembled. These are pe (from ), te (from ), ke (from ), me (from ), ne (from ), we (from ). There are also a number of distinct final forms. The four vowel positions are used for the three vowels and one of the diphthongs of Blackfoot. The script is largely obsolete.

The Pollard script, also known as Pollard Miao is an abugida invented by Methodist missionary Samuel Pollard. Pollard credited the basic idea of the script to the Cree syllabics, saying, "While working out the problem, we remembered the case of the syllabics used by a Methodist missionary among the Indians of North America, and resolved to do as he had done".

At present, Canadian syllabics seems reasonably secure within the Cree, Oji Cree, and Inuit communities. They appear somewhat more at risk among the Ojibwe, and 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 the Latin script. 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 system. Within the Cree and Ojibwe language communities, the situation is less confident. 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. Ojibwe speakers in the U. S. 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 U. S. 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. Use in other communities is moribund. Blackfoot syllabics have, for all intents and purposes, disappeared. Present day Blackfoot speakers use a Latin alphabet, and very few Blackfoot can still read—much less write—the syllabic system. Among the Athabaskan languages, syllabics are still in use among the Yellowknives Dene in Yellowknife, Dettah, and Ndılǫ, Northwest Territories. Recently, two major reference works on the Tetsǫ́t'ıné language were published by the Alaska Native Language Center, using syllabics: a verb grammar and a dictionary. Syllabics are also still in use at Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Church in Dettah, where they use a revised version of the 1904 hymnbook. Young people learn syllabics both in school as well as through culture camps organized by the Language, Culture, and History Department. No other Athabaskan version of the syllabics is known to be in vigorous use. In some cases, the languages themselves are on the brink of extinction. In other cases, syllabics has been replaced by a Latin alphabet. Many people—linguists and speakers of Athabaskan languages alike—feel that syllabics is ill suited to these languages. The government of the Northwest 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 Latin alphabet has effectively replaced syllabics. Very few people can read syllabics and none use them for routine writing. Syllabics are however popular in symbolic and artistic uses. 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 Latin alphabet was better, both for linguistic reasons and to reduce the cost of supporting multiple scripts. At present, at least for Inuktitut and Algonquian languages, Canadian government 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 syllabic writing is not always practical (on the Internet, for example), and in many cases a Latin alphabet would be less costly to use, 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 associate Latin letters with linguistic assimilation.

ScriptSource entry for Cans script. Lists a few fonts. GNU FreeFont. UCAS + UCASE range in sans serif face.