Thesyllabic writing system is an abugida used to write first nations languages such as Ojibwe, Cree, and Inuktitut. It was first devised by missionaries to spread the bible amongst aboriginal tribes but has since taken on a life of its own.
Languages like Ojibwe and Cree can be written using latin characters, and frequently are (especially in the States), but it’s sorta cumbersome. Think of Japanese words like Mi·tsu·bi·shi, Na·ga·sa·ki. Japanese would never have a word like ‘scratched’ (thanksTom Scott for the example), because every syllable must have a single consonant and a single vowel sound, with very few exceptions.
Most aboriginal languages are the same, so writing a separate character for a consonant and a vowel is kinda worthless. The Ojibwe word ‘a·ni·shi·naa·be’ is written as the shorter ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯ.
ᐊ : a ᓂ : ni ᔑ : shi ᓈ : naa ᐯ : be
In syllabics, every consonant has its own shape (ᐁ, ᐯ, ᑌ, ᑫ, ᒉ, ᒣ, ᓀ, ᓭ, ᔐ, ᔦ), and every vowel has a direction that the shape is rotated in, example:
Following is the simplified version of the syllabics chart. To build a syllabic, you look for which consonant you want to start with, then follow the line until you hit the vowel you want that pair to have. Think of the chart like the game Battleship (the consonants such as ‘p’ often come with fortis-lenis variants, in this case ‘b’. In syllabics, they are equivalent).
EXCEPTIONS AND QUIRKS
The exceptions to regular rules are the first row, which have only a vowel and no accompanying consonant, and the last two rows. An ‘h’ character, frequently used as a glottal stop, is added separately, and a ‘w’ character is represented as a dot that can be placed left of any character, sandwiching the sound between the consonant and vowel, ie.
ᐁ = e ᐌ = we
ᑌ = te ᑗ = twe (note the dot on the left)
Likewise, long vowels, written as aa, ii, and oo in latin spelling, are simply the syllabic with a dot placed above, ie:
ᐃ = i ᐄ = ii
ᐱ = pi ᐲ = pii ᐼ = pwi ᐾ = pwii
If a sole consonant is needed, you use a ‘final’, a smaller version of the ‘a’ syllabic. ie.
ᐸ = pa ᑉ = p
ᓴ = za ᔅ = z
When transliterated, a piece of Ojibwe text such as this (I found it on fb, don’t know what it says lol)
