Not even an example of the glyphs??? Smithsonian must be another repository of clickbait like Forbes.
It's on wikipedia. I had thought everyone's seen these, but maybe I was the weird kid who'd read the encyclopedia for fun.
Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee
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Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee
#72Not even an example of the glyphs??? Smithsonian must be another repository of clickbait like Forbes.
It's on wikipedia. I had thought everyone's seen these, but maybe I was the weird kid who'd read the encyclopedia for fun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary#Unicode
There's at least two of us, though at the time I was limited to the World Book Encyclopedia.
You (or anyone else here) might enjoy Omniglot, an old web 1.0 site that was amazing for its comprehensive treatment of all writing scripts:
Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
"but probably not": Actually, probably so. The scholars who favor the indigenous explanation are a small minority outside of India. It's possible it was independent, but very, very doubtful, and none can explain the enormous gap in time between the Indus script and later Brahmic scripts.
Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee
#74The article’s title is misleading: “The Man Who Created a Written Language for the Cherokee Did It So Efficiently and Elegantly, His Peers Thought It Was Magic.” His peers thought it was magic because they were unfamiliar with the concept of writing, not because his writing system was so efficient. He was put on trial for witchcraft because people thought he was communicating via magic. https://education.nationalgeog…
Ok, we've changed the title using more representative language from the article.
It's plenty interesting without superfluous claims!
Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee
#75Not even an example of the glyphs??? Smithsonian must be another repository of clickbait like Forbes.
It's on wikipedia. I had thought everyone's seen these, but maybe I was the weird kid who'd read the encyclopedia for fun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary#Unicode
Thanks! We'll put that in the toptext as well.
Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee
#76Earlier 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…
"This is why Hebrew's alphabet near-perfectly phonetically represents the spoken language" - nonsense. That's just because modern Hebrew is based on the written language and thus reflects spelling pronunciation rather than historical pronunciation. Also, proto-Sinaitic is not an alphabet. That's why Persian writing became harder to read when they switched from the nearly alphabetic Old Persian cuneiform to Aramaic ab…
> nonsense
Can you please make your substantive points without directing pejoratives at the other? This is covered in the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Your comment would be just fine (indeed, excellent) without that bit.
Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is it’s the earliest known alphabet but not the ancestor to all alphabetic languages as there are Asian and other alphabetic languages that are not derived from western or Arabic alphabets. Specifically Greek and Latin alphabets and their descendants are based on it. Specifically Japanese Hiragana and Katakana are syllabic alphabets derived from kanji (and Chinese pictograms) as a simplification of t…
No: most scholars believe alphabets were only invented once, much like the wheel. All Western alphabets are direct descendants, and the non-Western alphabets were directly inspired by it. [1] Phonetic alphabets were introduced to most of Asia by various Brahmic scripts; the most widely-used (albeit briefly-used) one being the Mongolian Phags-pa script [2], derived from Tibetan, derived from various Brahmic scripts, d…
The wheel was independently invented in the Americas, it just seems to have been used exclusively for toys:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel#/media/File:Remojadas_Wh...
Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
Might be a mess linguistically, but it's sure nice to have only 26 letters with no accents on a keyboard.
The pronunciation is so bad though. The consonants are mostly fine, but the way we write vowels is a total mess. We'd need at least a dozen vowel letters to sanely represent English. And we could cut a couple consonant letters to help make room, for maybe 30 letters total, still no accents.
Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee
#79The article’s title is misleading: “The Man Who Created a Written Language for the Cherokee Did It So Efficiently and Elegantly, His Peers Thought It Was Magic.” His peers thought it was magic because they were unfamiliar with the concept of writing, not because his writing system was so efficient. He was put on trial for witchcraft because people thought he was communicating via magic. https://education.nationalgeog…
Ok, we've changed the title using more representative language from the article. It's plenty interesting without superfluous claims!
I didn’t mean to criticize the HN title—it accurately reflected the title on the linked page. I just thought the article’s choice of title was interesting given the rest of the story.
Re: Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazing "By 1825, the majority of Cherokees could read and write in their newly developed orthography.[5]". It even has a reference so it must be true.
Anyway I put in a request to get a copy at my local library so I will update here in a few months when I have a copy of the book.
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