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Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee

#61

Post by Terr_ »

reissbaker wrote: post #22
torben-friis wrote: post #4

>The syllabary was widely lauded, as its phonetic accuracy and simplicity made it far easier to grasp than English. I mean, that feels like it's bound to happen when an alphabet is built to represent current language or pronunciation. English is notoriously awful for not doing that.

Fun fact: all (non-Cherokee?) alphabets in use today stem from an ancient Canaanite alphabet called the proto-Sinaitic script [1]. This is why Hebrew's alphabet near-perfectly phonetically represents the spoken language: Hebrew is just a dialect of Canaanite, and all Canaanite dialects are mutually intelligible, and alphabets were invented to represent spoken Canaanite. As the alphabet was cribbed by the Greeks (who…

> all (non-Cherokee?) alphabets in use today stem from an ancient Canaanite

Counterexample: Korean Hangul [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul

Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee

#64

Post by yellowapple »

QuiDortDine wrote: post #59
reissbaker wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: all (non-Cherokee?) alphabets in use today stem from an ancient Canaanite alphabet called the proto-Sinaitic script [1]. This is why Hebrew's alphabet near-perfectly phonetically represents the spoken language: Hebrew is just a dialect of Canaanite, and all Canaanite dialects are mutually intelligible, and alphabets were invented to represent spoken Canaanite. As the alphabet was cribbed by the Greeks (who…

"and all Canaanite dialects are mutually intelligible": That is the definition of a dialect. Also, I don't know how you can claim Hebrew is phonetically represented by its alphabet rather than the other way around, as a revived language the pronunciations are largely a matter of convention based on Yiddish. It would be more accurate to say that modern Hebrew uses an ancient writing system, which happens to be closely…

> That is the definition of a dialect.

I dunno, some English dialects don't seem particularly intelligible to me, and I'm a natively fluent speaker of it.

Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee

#65

Post by [deleted] »

torben-friis wrote: post #4

>The syllabary was widely lauded, as its phonetic accuracy and simplicity made it far easier to grasp than English. I mean, that feels like it's bound to happen when an alphabet is built to represent current language or pronunciation. English is notoriously awful for not doing that.

[deleted]

Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee

#66

Post by yellowapple »

colechristensen wrote: post #19
torben-friis wrote: post #4

>The syllabary was widely lauded, as its phonetic accuracy and simplicity made it far easier to grasp than English. I mean, that feels like it's bound to happen when an alphabet is built to represent current language or pronunciation. English is notoriously awful for not doing that.

English is three* languages in a trenchcoat, all languages borrow but English in particular is a cobbled together mess. Like a salors' pidgin language except instead of sailors, driven by the ruling class of Britain at the boundary of several language families who kept conquering each other. *(or 7 or whatever number makes you feel best)

Good languages borrow, great languages steal?

Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee

#67

Post by austin-cheney »

buildsjets wrote: post #51
austin-cheney wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another counter-example is Phags Pa Script. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BCPhags-pa_script

Explain. The wiki you linked to specifically states that it is descended from Tibetan script, which is in turn descended from Proto-Sinaitic script.

The article said nothing like that. It was an original script invented by a Tibetan monk at the paid directions of Kublai Khan.

> Descending from Tibetan script, it is part of the Brahmic family of scripts, which includes Devanagari and scripts used throughout Southeast Asia and Central Asia.[5] It is unique among Brahmic scripts in that it is written from top to bottom,[5] as how classical Chinese used to be written, and as the Mongolian alphabet or later Manchu alphabet is still written.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BCPhags-pa_script

> The origin of the script is still much debated, with most scholars stating that Brahmi was derived from or at least influenced by one or more contemporary Semitic scripts. Some scholars favour the idea of an indigenous origin,[19] or connection to the much older and as yet undeciphered Indus script[20][21] but the evidence is insufficient at best.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmi_script

So maybe, but probably not and this particular language though it has roots elsewhere of debated origin was an original spontaneous creation.

Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee

#68

Post by postoplust »

steve-atx-7600 wrote: post #62

Not even an example of the glyphs??? Smithsonian must be another repository of clickbait like Forbes.

> Eventually, he hit on 86 syllables that expressed specific sounds, each syllable represented by symbols borrowed from Greek, Hebrew and English. Later reduced to 85 symbols...

Maybe the symbols themselves aren't new.

Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee

#69

Post by ianburrell »

colechristensen wrote: post #19
torben-friis wrote: post #4

>The syllabary was widely lauded, as its phonetic accuracy and simplicity made it far easier to grasp than English. I mean, that feels like it's bound to happen when an alphabet is built to represent current language or pronunciation. English is notoriously awful for not doing that.

English is three* languages in a trenchcoat, all languages borrow but English in particular is a cobbled together mess. Like a salors' pidgin language except instead of sailors, driven by the ruling class of Britain at the boundary of several language families who kept conquering each other. *(or 7 or whatever number makes you feel best)

English is a West Germanic language with vocabulary from other languages, primarily French and Latin. But most of the core words are Germanic. It is not a pidgin whose defining feature is simplified grammar.

Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee

#70

Post by QuiDortDine »

yellowapple wrote: post #64
QuiDortDine wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"and all Canaanite dialects are mutually intelligible": That is the definition of a dialect. Also, I don't know how you can claim Hebrew is phonetically represented by its alphabet rather than the other way around, as a revived language the pronunciations are largely a matter of convention based on Yiddish. It would be more accurate to say that modern Hebrew uses an ancient writing system, which happens to be closely…

> That is the definition of a dialect. I dunno, some English dialects don't seem particularly intelligible to me, and I'm a natively fluent speaker of it.

This is like speciation but for languages: there's no "ah-ha!" moment, but we know a lemur can't produce viable offsprings with a zebra. Likewise we know Italian isn't French even though some words are kinda similar. If you want to be technical about it, it's a spectrum: I understand British people and people from the American deep South, but it's far from certain they will understand each other. Hard to be precise with social sciences.

That said, two people who understand each other are, by any reasonable definition, speaking dialects of the same tongue (if not, obviously, the very same dialect).

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