Talk:Canadian Aboriginal syllabics

Title

This page replaces Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, which is not what anyone except the Unicode committee calls syllabics writing. Diderot 10:12, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I dislike this redirect. The Unicode Standard and ISO/IEC 10646 call it Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics because that's what the Canadian government's CASEC committee called it when they engaged in the unification of the different varieties of "Canadian Syllabics". What you've written "syllabics writing" isn't what people say. People just call them Syllabics, generally. You've kept "aboriginal" which is governmentalese at its best. I think this should be reverted. Evertype 22:24, 2004 Nov 28 (UTC)

I disagree. UCAS is a code block in the Unicode standard. It is not a writing system. It would be as inappropriate as replacing Roman alphabet with ISO Latin 1. "Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics" would be acceptable, but the "unified" part is purely a matter of Unicode blocks. It is not unified in anyone's practice except standardisation bodies. Users think of it as various kinds of Cree syllabics, Ojibwe syllabics, Dene syllabics and Inuktitut syllabics. Diderot 06:19, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The alphabets

They all become squares on my computer. Is that normal?

Yes. Download and install the fonts here and the problem will go away. Diderot 23:02, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Inuktun and some Inuit

I reverted back to my earlier version from the reversion by Kwamikagami, and I want to explain why. Inuktun is a not the name of a language that is distinct from Inuktitut. I'm not sure quite what it's supposed to refer to - it sounds like a the kind of word you might use in a western dialect to describe Inuktitut (Inuktun = like an Inuk). And, not all Inuit use syllabics. The Alaskans, Greenlanders, and Inuvialuit, Inuinnaqtun and Labridorimiut in Canada have never used syllabics. A minority of Inuit globally and many Inuit in Canada do not and have never used syllabics to write their language. --Diderot 16:42, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Maybe, but for that matter Inuktitut isn't a language either. Inuit is a dialect chain, going by various local conventional names: Iñupiaq in Alaska, Inuktun in the NW Territories and western Nunavut, Inuktitut in eastern Nunavut, Kalaallisut in Greenland. The point was that it is used both in "Inuktitut" and "Inuktun", though the latter only in Nunavut. However, if you would prefer the name Inuvialuktun over Inuktun, that's fine. John D Nichols, writing in Daniels & Bright, had this to say: "the current form [of syllabics], used for most dialects of Eastern Canadian Inuktitut and for the Natsilingmiut dialect of Western Canadian Inuktun, derives from the 1865 reforms ..." He gives as his reference Kenn Harper, 1985, "The Early Development of Inuktitut Syllabic Orthography", Études/Inuit/Studies 9:141-62.

As for the second point, this is true for all nations that use syllabics. For instance, although it is used to write all Cree dialects within a certain geographic range, it is not used for all communities speaking those dialects. The Inuit should not be singled out for the "some"/"many" comment. kwami 19:00, 2005 August 24 (UTC)

Yes, Inuktitut can be viewed as a number of related languages, but there is no simple criteria for making the distinction between a group of languages and a single one. Politics is the usual way - but our article on Inuktitut covers the entire dialect continuum - which is the usual way of doing it, both among the Inuit and in the technical literature. The Inuit do not always use consistent names for their language, so the notion of an Inuktun separate from Inuktitut is a bit strange. Inuvialuktun is a purely political construct, a point made in the corresponding article, which even the Inuvialuit are hesitant to use.

I made the syntax of where syllabics are used in Inuktitut a bit more precise and more in line with the claim for Cree, since it is an eastern vs. western arctic issue.

In as much as one wishes to consider the western dialects separate from Inuktitut, I don't think there was ever a real tradition of syllabics in the west. The Inuinnait (Copper Inuit) were the last Inuit reached by missionaries - they were not in full contact with European society until the 1920s. By then, a few syllabics readers had learned to write that way from Inuit further east, but missionaries already believed quite strongly in the exclusive use of Roman letters and promptly began using exclusively Latin alphabet schemes. Still further west, the Mackenzie delta Inuit were likely never exposed to syllabics, and the Alaskans would likely have never heard of syllabics. Certainly syllabics aren't used in the Inuinnait areas today except where the new Nunavut government has imposed them, and they are totally absent from the NWT which uses only Roman alphabet writing officially and in schools, to the total exclusion of other writing schemes.

The "eastern Inuktitut" vs. "western Inuktun" dichotomy is easily overestimated. I suppose you could define the line as the s/h isogloss, which puts Natsillingmiutut on the other side, but that's more than a bit arbitrary and I don't think anyone does so anymore.

--Diderot 17:44, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Sekani

I've eliminated the references to Sekani as there is no evidence that the Sekani ever wrote their own language in syllabics. Some Sekani people did know syllabics, but they used them to read and write Carrier. Bill 08:42, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Just eliminated some more references to Sekani which I must have overlooked. There is only one syllabic text known in a Sekani context, a gravestone at McLeod Lake. I have read it, and it is in Carrier, not Sekani. Bill 19:23, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Carrier Transcription

I've changed the transcription of the vowel-only series for Carrier. The previous transcription was not IPA - it was evidently based on a misunderstanding of the Carrier Linguistic Committee writing system, which is the Roman system introduced by the SIL that is now the most widely used writing system for Carrier. In that writing system <u> represents /ʌ/ and <oo> represents /u/. Someone evidently thought that <oo> stood for long /o/. I have substituted the correct IPA symbols. Bill 19:23, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Syllabics : an Abugida?

Am I the only one who would dispute that the various Canadian Syllabics are not abugidas? In Cree syllabics for example, there's no definite order for which the characters are placed. In addition to this, the said rotation/reflection done to the characters is not consistent throughout the entire writing system(s). - In a regular abugida system, such as the Khmer script, every consonant has an inherent vowel (usually /a/) which is modified by the use of diacritics (or by 'modifying a base character'). In Syllabics however, the use of diacritics is rare, and since there is no one script order, it's impossible to define an inherent vowel or a base character from which all others are derived.

A lot of this is better explained on the Language Geek website, where it also cites that "Peter T. Daniels, [the one] who invented the term abugida, calls Cree a ‘sophisticated grammatogeny’, certainly not an abugida." - Io Katai (talk) 05:13, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

What would you classify it as, then? I assume, since you're reading Greek Wikipedia, that you know that the term "grammatogeny" has nothing to do with the form of the script, whether an abugida or anything else.

I have no idea what you mean by "there's no definite order for which the characters are placed."

An abugida is a script where the letters stand for consonants, and you modify them for vowels. People take the Brahmi family to be representative, because it's so widespread (as in Khmer). However, the term abugida itself comes from Ethiopic, and that is also irregular: You can't predict how to represent the vowels. In Cree, you have letters for consonants, and modify them to indicate vowels, so it fits the basic definition of 'abugida'. Yes, it's a unique modification, and it's a little irregular, mostly because of somewhat haphazard evolution, but it's not a true alphabet, not an abjad, and not a syllabary. I don't know that anyone has proposed a new term just for Syllabics. — kwami (talk) 07:23, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

If you read the website I linked, you would know that I'm citing Peter T. Daniels, the first person who actually used the term "abugida" to refer to this type of script. (It's even noted in the Abugida article). I'm not saying that his terminology is any better, but he certainly distinguished Cree syllabics from all other abugidas. And although I used Khmer as an example, any other abugida still follows the general pattern of having a base character + modifications (Ge'ez, Kharoṣṭhī, among others).

I also never said it was an abjad, syllabary, nor alphabet; but it's neither an abugida. - The main reason for this, as I said, there has never been a standard on how to order the characters, which means that it's impossible to say that there is a base character which is modified to change its vowel (even though they bare ressemblance). In Cree for example, nearly every community has a differently established order of characters[1]; whereas in most other abugidas, the base character which is modified is more than clear. The only actual diacritic used in Syllabics is the 'dot', which generally indicates a long vowel, similar to how the Hepburn romanization uses a macron. As for the syllable-final consonants (ᒃ,ᑦ,ᔥ,ᒻ...), most variants don't agree on the same characters, and some don't bear a ressemblance to their former (ᑕ,ᐊ...).

So how do you argue that the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics are an abugida system, when they're far closer to a syllabary with alphabetical elements? From the abugida article : "An abugida is a segmental writing system in which each letter (basic character) represents a consonant accompanied by a specific vowel; other vowels are indicated by modification of the consonant sign, either by means of diacritics or through a change in the form of the consonant. - Io Katai (talk) 21:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not following your wording on the final consonants, but in any case they're not relevant here.

I'd have to read Daniels again to see how closely that site represents him, but it does say,

Abugida is a term coined by Peter T. Daniels for a script whose basic signs denote consonants with an inherent vowel and where consistent modifications of the basic sign indicate other following vowels than the inherent one.

The only way Cree does not fit this description (arguably) is that it's arbitrary which inflected form you pick to be the base; that is, which is the inherent vowel. That's certainly a significant difference from Brahmi, but Cree is nothing like a syllabary in his scheme, which is what you're claiming. It sounds to me like Daniels was just trying to word things in a way that was intelligible.

'Consistent' doesn't mean 100%. If it did, many of the Brahmic scripts could not be considered abugidas.

Daniels divided phonographic scripts into four groups: syllabaries, which have no letters than can be identified as consonants; abjads, which only have letters for consonants; abugidas, which have letters for consonants that are modified to indicate vowels; and alphabets, which have distinct letters for consonants and vowels. No script is going to fit perfectly, but Cree could only be an abugida in this classification.

If you take things too literally, hardly any scripts are going to match Daniels' definitions. For instance, an alphabet is supposed to be a phoneme-based system. Therefore, the English script I am using now is not an alphabet, because it requires digraphs. Shall we create a new category, 'digraphary', and say that English is 'a digraphary with alphabetic elements'? I don't see how English diverges from the alphabet prototype any more than Cree diverges from the abugida prototype.

Anyway, since you can choose any vowel to be the inherent one, you could argue that the choice is irrelevant. Your argument is like saying the Roman script isn't an alphabet because different communities make different choices as to which letters are consonants and which are vowels: i, r, u, w, y, and z are all consonants in some Roman scripts, and vowels in others. Similarly, b, s, m, g may be consonants or tones, while j and v may be consonants, vowels, or tones. This doesn't mean the Roman script is not an alphabet. Also, having charts with different orders, as in your link, doesn't mean that different Cree communities have different alphabetic orders in their dictionaries. However, even if there were no dictionary standard for which vowel was basic within a single community, that's no more relevant than the days when there was no dictionary standard for whether i and v were consonants or vowels in English. — kwami (talk) 04:16, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not arguing alphabets though, I'm arguing that the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics are not an abugida script. Like I said, if you can't prove what makes them an abugida, then why should they be classified as so? If you don't actually read the website that I keep citing (which explains in more details what I've been trying to convey), then your arguments are kind of flawed. Arguing that it doesn't have to be 100% could also mean that you could classify CAS as a syllabary. In fact, Omniglot classifies CAS under syllabary. And if you look down, there are also scripts such as the Kpelle syllabary which also have alphabetical elements. The Iberian scripts are also classified as a syllabary, although the Wikipedia article classifies them as semi-syllabaries because they have alphabetic elements.

I'll even go so far as to cite Unicode, which says "In other featural syllabaries, such as the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, the relationship between the sound and graphics parts is less systematic."[2] - There are also books that back the term "syllabary"[3] rather than "abugida"[4]. I also found it hard to prove that CAS were an abugida because most search results return quoted wikipedia information. - Io Katai (talk) 05:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with it, but I fail to see at a quick glance how Kpelle is alphabetic. pi and li are identical, as are po and su, but glyphs with common consonants or vowels don't seem particularly similar. How is that alphabetic?

I have read that site, as should be obvious from my last comments. In the opinion of the author, Cree deviates enough from Daniels' definition of abugida to argue that it should not be considered one. I'm giving you the counter argument. My analogies with alphabets are just that: analogies to show you where your logic leads us. The difference hinges on one thing: Must the inherent vowel be objectively obvious to an outsider, as in Hindi, or can it be a matter of convention, as in Cree? You're arguing that it cannot be the latter, but you have little to back you up. Granted, it's hard to find outside support either way, because abugida is not a term in widespread use.

The Unicode site is ... bizarre. It claims that hangul is a syllabary. Hangul! Can there be a more perfect example of an alphabet than hangul? It's more alphabetic than Greek! I think that shows where they're coming from: A "syllabary" is a script where each syllable has a separate Unicode designation. It has nothing to do with the script itself; it depends on how the Unicode Consortium decided to encode it! Because of their differing structures, different encoding strategies work better for Hindi and Cree. That's not what Daniels had in mind! Their definition of 'abugida' is specifically a "Brahmic family script"; they even say that Ethiopic is more-or-less a syllabary; perhaps they're worried they'd look foolish if they definitively claimed it was one.

You gave me this definition of an abugida: a script whose basic signs denote consonants with an inherent vowel and where consistent modifications of the basic sign indicate other following vowels than the inherent one. Cree fits your definition. — kwami (talk) 07:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

As for the Hangul example, Unicode analyzes the whole segment as a syllable 한 [han] (and they go so far as to explain their definition of 'featural syllabary'[5]), and each individual jamos (elements that compose the whole syllable/character block[6] - 한) as alphabetical ㅎㅏㄴ. And the definition of abugida is mentioned in the second paragraph, not the first (It says that most SouthEastern scripts historically derived from the Brahmic script are abugidas, not all Brahmic family scripts are the only existing abugidas). As for the Ethiopic example, it's explaining how in Unicode it's usually treated as a syllabary, because the encoding required differs from from standard abugidas in the SouthEast. Yet, they still classify it as an abugida, or else it would be under the (featural) syllabary section along with Cree et al. -

Asides, the issue about classifying CAS as a featural syllabary was raised on the Unicode Mail List, and discusses reasons for classifying scripts as they were (as well as why CAS are both 'featural', and unlike 'abugidas').[7][8][9][10]etc.

As for your comparaisons with an alphabet, it's been long known that they don't represent sound-to-sound accurately, even Unicode acknowledges that. Those which are though, are typically called 'true alphabets'. Abugidas can be the same, the most notorious one being the Khmer script because it has no spelling standards. And although I did use Daniels as an example, he isn't the only person to argue that CAS should be reclassified; as I did in linking with my sources. I would still appreciate on the other hand, reliable sources that point to all CAS being abugidas.

And the definition (the one which you quoted is not the one found in the abugida article), if you read clearly, defines that all consonants must have an inherent vowel. That's ok, it's the same as a syllabary. Then it goes on to say that the basic sign must be modified in order to change the vowel. - If you want to argue that CAS fit this definition, then what's the basic sign? Just because some symbols (not all) express a relationship (which differs from character to character), doesn't mean they can necessarily be bunched together under a term that only vaguely represents, when other terms would be more accurate. CAS were in essence based off of the Pitman Shorthand phonetic notation, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that they have featural elements ("the symbols do not represent letters, but rather sounds(...)for the most part, written as they are spoken"). Unlike this article though, the Cree syllabics, Carrier syllabics, and the Ojibwe writing systems articles also refer to their branches of syllabics as syllabaries. - Io Katai (talk) 16:47, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay. ᐸ is the consonant /p/. It has the inherent vowel /a/. To change the vowel to /i/, you rotate it clockwise. To change the vowel to /e/ etc. etc. To cancel the inherent vowel, you superscript it.

That fits the definition of an abugida. Your objection is that it's arbitrary which form you take to be basic. It isn't arbitrary in those languages where the superscript form is derived from the basic form. However, even where it is arbitrary, I don't see how that's relevant. It still fits the definition, which never defines which form must be basic. You also object that which form is basic (so you admit there is a basic form!) varies from language/dialect to language. That again is irrelevant: Which Roman letters are consonants or vowels varies by language, century, and dictionary, but they're still alphabetical. That kind of variation is true for all kinds of scripts.

If you take Daniels' other definition, where abugidas use diacritics for vowels, then Cree would not be an abugida. However, Daniels is clearly inconsistent here. There are three types of consonantal modification in the world's scripts: diacritics (Brahmic family), modifying shapes (Ethiopic family), and rotation/reflection (Cree family). You've directed me to talk pages where people discuss the relative merits of calling each an abugida, but all fit Daniels' broader definition. If you want to say there are proper abugidas with diacritics for vowels, and others without diacritics, okay, but you could also argue that there are proper alphabets with a one-to-one glyph-to-phoneme structure, and others like English which are not proper alphabets.

I guess you could also argue that the difference depends on how children learn the script in school. The Ethiopic and probably the Cree families are learned as syllabaries. That seems to be the point of much of the Unicode mail discussion. However, I have never seen a formal definition where scripts are classified based on how they are taught. Rather, all definitions I've seen classify scripts based on their form. — kwami (talk) 19:59, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you could say that ᐸ is /p/ with the inherent vowel /a/, but you could also say that it represents the whole syllable /pa/. The argument is the fact that no one script order defines the base character from which all others are derived. Most people who define the script as a syllabary will acknowledge that there is a pattern (why can't there be? It's based on a constructed featural script after all), but it is one unique to syllabics (rotation, reflexion: symetric, asymetric). If you completely define all CAS as abugidas, then it should be impossible for lone consonants to exist, as they too should have the inherent vowel /a/. Finals in Syllabics can function as regular consonants, whether they're placed in syllable coda, used in consonant clusters[11], or placed in initial position (like ᐦ in Ojibwe) [12].

Sorry to interrupt, but as the document generator to the link provided, let me just clarify that in the unpointed, the ᑕᐦ in the Lac Seul orthography is "tah" (ᐦ as a final) but in the Island Lake orthography, it is "tha" (ᐦ as a medial). CJLippert (talk) 01:37, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

You also state that finals are related to their counterparts, so that ᐸ is /pa/, thus ^ᐸ should be /p/. This is inconsistent throughout all CAS, the so-called 'base character' isn't always used, and in some cases the consonants bear zero relation to the consonant-vowel series, as in Maskwacis Plains Cree Syllabics. And unlike any other abugida, including Ge'ez, they don't normally deal with completely independant consonants (diacritic modifications at most). Whereas a few syllabaries deal with some (or one) independant vowels, such as Cherokee.

Anyhow, saying that CAS as a whole doesn't have to be a perfect abugida, could mean that it's also an imperfect syllabary, or alphabet. I would also like to see sources. Making claims is one thing, but if you can't follow them up with sources, then what good are they? Even in this article, the external links and references define Syllabics as a syllabary [13][14], perhaps a unique system or a syllabary with alphabetical elements [15], characters with alphabetical elements[16], and an alphabet[17]. - The reason for calling it an alphabet is because "since more complex syllables are written with more than one symbol, and since even simple syllables such as these, consisting of only a consonant and a vowel, are actually decomposed into their component consonant and vowel."[18] - Io Katai (talk) 03:35, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I've already covered most of these points, so I won't bother to repeat myself.

"If you completely define all CAS as abugidas, then it should be impossible for lone consonants to exist": By that logic, if you completely define all CAS as syllabaries, then it should be impossible for lone consonants to exist.

Both syllabaries and abugidas do idiosyncratic things with final consonants, which in any case aren't used to classify scripts.

Yes, it's common to use various terms for syllabics, just as it's common to speak of the Hindi syllabary or the Arabic alphabet. However, all of the scripts on Wikipedia are classified by Daniels' terms. You may take issue with that, but that's a larger issue than just this one article, and needs to be taken up with the people working on articles such as writing system and abugida. — kwami (talk) 06:20, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Several Brahmic scripts also mark final consonants with diacritics, like Cree, but they're not considered any less abugidas because of that.

Anyway, you're clearly persuaded by one website which takes issue with the classification of syllabics as an abugida. That's hardly reason to change, but can certainly be brought up as evidence on one of the more general pages. — kwami (talk) 06:42, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it was the fact that the wiki article stated it as an abugida that made me use that original website. The LanguageGeek is after all, referenced throughout most native Canadian language articles. That aside, I used various different references to continue arguing the point. If there were other sources than Wikipedia, I might acknowledge CAS as a family of abugidas, but it's absurd to consider all of them abugidas when there are no sources to back that claim. And since Wikipedia prefers references over original research, I further provided resources to support my points.

And I do agree with your comment about syllabaries, but some do have alphabetical elements. Brahmic scripts can indicate final consonants or clusters through diacritics; but diacritics alone don't have any value, thus they are dependant. In syllabics, you can have things such as ᐯᐦ <peh>, ᐦᒑ <chaa>, ᐦᐊ <ha> (Lac Seul Ojibwe). This is comparable to how the letter <h> (among others) functions in the latin alphabet, where consonants are independant. In addition, loan words and loan names in Syllabics may use 'finals' as initials.

You also seem persuaded to put down Daniels' terms when he considers Cree a 'sophisticated grammatogeny' (a term he coined, and also used for the development of bopomofo); yet you say Wikipedia follows by his definitions. He himself wrote If one of the orientations were basic, then it could be considered an abugida., which is as I pointed out, not contradicting his definition of an abugida. Anyhow, I asked for one simple thing thrice, it's useless to continue arguing you at this point. - Io Katai (talk) 08:55, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not following what thing you're thinking of that you asked for thrice. AFAIK, I've responded to all the points you've brought up.

Again, 'sophisticated grammatogeny' isn't a kind of script, to be contrasted with abugida or anything else. It simply means that someone got creative in inventing it.

I wasn't familiar with that quote from Daniels. It does appear then that he considers it at best a marginal abugida. However, if memory serves, he certainly does not consider it a syllabary, featural or otherwise. Also, there are several other cases where he comments that a script is marginally this or that, since few scripts are consistently one thing or another. (The half alphabetic, half syllabic Iberian scripts are an extreme example of this.) It's certainly worth mentioning this in the article. — kwami (talk) 09:35, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

parsing order of the vowels

Folks, why are the syllabics vowels ordered the way they are in this article? When James Evans wrote his Speller's... in 1837, the vowels he used were A, E, O, U (our E, I, O, A), which became the basis for the syllabics' vowel order. Even the pDAM that made the proposal to the UniCode Consortium present each shape with the names in the E, I, O, A order... not A, O, I, E. Could we re-arrange the tables appropriately, and also flip the groups-of-four so that E is shown at NW or N position, I is shown at NE or S position, O is shown at SW or W position and A is shown at SE or E position? CJLippert (talk) 19:49, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

First point well taken, and done. Second would destroy the illustration of symmetry that is the whole point of grouping the letters that way. kwami (talk) 00:25, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the first. As for the second, it will still maintain symmetry. CJLippert (talk) 02:31, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Dubious

For starters, adding the template Refimprove was to request further references in the article, as is customary of very large and detailed articles that are backed up with little to no sources. For two, I added the dubious tag because in a previous discussion, I've told you that it doesn't suit the definition of abugida in any sense, and I further argued my point by providing sources and references. In retaliation, I asked you over three times to provide a source or a reference that would back up your claim (one that didn't cite Wikipedia itself), and you failed to do so by throwing a fit for paragraphs long.

I'm not here to keep arguing with you, but if you're going to keep removing the tags, please fix what is concerned. The first tag is since it does not suit Wikipedia:Verifiability et al., while the second one directly concerns what I've mentioned. You've been an editor on Wikipedia now long enough to understand that you shouldn't just add information without providing sources. Therefore unless you want to be civil and provide a reason why all 48k of that material should not follow standard Wikipedia guidelines, I'll just have to request an administrator to resolve this. (I had decided to let the argument cool for a few months in hopes that you would understand this) - Io Katai (talk) 00:24, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I thought the two tags were for the same thing.

I thought we were finally getting somewhere with your last posting, but then you never followed up.

Where have I been uncivil?

An abugida as defined by Daniels is a script where consonants are primary and vowels secondary. Cree is a pretty close fit to that definition. If it's not an abugida, can you suggest how we should classify it? Also, can you provide a reference to your last quote from Daniels? kwami (talk) 00:30, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Well although I do agree that Cree is the closest one in the Syllabics branch that suits his definition, in this article we're talking about the entire Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics. It would be saying that since Japanese Kana is related to Kanji, therefore Kana must also be a (logo)graphic script. Which, as we know it's a syllabary. As for example, Ojibwe make use of more alphabetical elements; which makes a pretty messy abugida when you consider how many exceptions you should allow.

By that same token, I'm saying that calling all of these scripts abugidas is an overgeneralization, as the way they function becomes more complex from Evans' original design. Unlike any other abugida, this family of scripts has no diacritics as I have pointed out previously; since all characters are fully independant (and a true abugida should not allow for such a high ratio of independant consonants). I suppose you could say that the only one exception is Carrier syllabics, which makes use of about two diacritics to mark extra vowels (yet this is no different than having accents in the alphabet). -- The rotation/(positioning of characters in a chart) on the other hand, is used inconsistently from East to West, and it is thus impossible to define a base consonant from which all others are derived (therefore each non-alphabetical symbol is not a consonant with an inherent vowel, but rather an entire syllable). If you let alone this one controversial element of the script, there would be nothing left to support the argument that there is a relationship between the characters, meaning it would be no different than any other semi-syllabary.

As for my definition, I originally pointed it out from the article abugida (which seems to have changed since, but the rough definition is still there), however it was also mentioned in my first link, and is a recurrent definition elsewhere.[19][20][21] To be honest though, I really wouldn't know what type would be best to describe Syllabics as a whole, as it could technically fit anywhere between (with exceptions) an imperfect: alphabet, abugida, (semi-)syllabary, featural, etc. Which is also a reason why Peter T. Daniels excludes Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, as John Cowan points out[22]:

It doesn't really fit into any of these classifications; as Daniels has

said many times, the products of what he calls "sophisticated

grammatogeny" don't necessarily fit his schema very well or even at all.

This includes both Canadian Syllabics and Hangeul.

Maybe my preference is "syllabary with alphabetical elements", which avoids the confusion of abugida, while staying true to what it is. However, this is also open for debate. - Io Katai (talk) 02:29, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Okay, now I'm starting to get a better feel for where you're coming from.

Can we get one of Daniels' actual quotes to this effect, rather than just someone paraphrasing him in a blog? That would make a good addition to the article.

It's a mistake, though, to equate abugidas with diacritics. The prototypical abugida (or at least the source of the name), Ge'ez, doesn't have diacritics. Also, it's irrelevant whether Eastern & Western Cree are consistent with each other: what matters is how each script behaves on its own. We don't claim Greek isn't a true alphabet because its sister script Phoenician doesn't have consistent vowel marking.

The characters are anything but independent: The base (the consonant) is the shape, and the modification (the vowel) is the orientation. The syllables are not separate forms as they are in a syllabary. (Also, the blog you quoted says it's definitely some sort of alphabet, just not easily subclassified.)

Why do you say that Ojibwe is more alphabetic than Cree? The final consonants? How is superscripting any different conceptually from ligating? Both are positionally modifying a consonant to show the absence of a vowel.

I'd like to see the ref for Daniels specifically excluding syllabics from the category of abugida, if you can find it. kwami (talk) 05:55, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Just looked over your three PDF refs. All equate abugidas with Brahmic scripts, with one stating that the abugida (Ge'ez) isn't a very good abugida. Daniels definition, AFAIK, does not depend on the script being Brahmic, it's just that Brahmic are the most familiar abugidas. kwami (talk) 14:59, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Asides a few mentions of Daniels referring it as that, this reply shows him directly using the term himself. Unfortunately, he doesn't explain himself in that specific message.

As for Syllabics 'finals', they're far more independant than mere diacritics. As I had earlier pointed out, they can be used to denote consonant clusters (whether initially or in syllable coda), initials, and finals. In addition, you cannot use them as a valid argument to describe a relationship with superscripting another character, because some sets of finals don't bear any ressemblance to the former, (this is what I meant by Western/Eastern differences) as in Maskwacis Plains Cree Syllabics. -- Your argument (against finals as independant consonants) seems to be stuck on the fact that the vowels <ᐊ ᐁ ᐃ ᐅ> are still rotated, however this does not make an abugida anymore than how Canadian French has <e> as /ə/, <é> as /e/, <è> as /ɛ/, and <ê> as /ɛ: (note how there is also a relationship there?).

I've also referred to many things, so I'm not sure what blog you're referring to. However, it's not out of the realm of possibilities, as I have mentioned earlier.

As for Ojibwe being more alphabetic than Cree, its finals can be used as initials/finals/clusters (although this is certainly not limited to Ojibwe, as the Dene Suline Syllabics also use all three). To add, Ojibwe also makes use of letters such as <ᕒ>, which represents l/r, or <ᐤ> /w/.

Ge'ez, unlike CAS, has a clear and easily identifiable base character from which all others are derived; this in no way conflicts with Daniel's definition. CAS only demonstrate that although there is a relationship, it is more arbitrary/random than systematic. Ge'ez also does not deal with independant consonants the way CAS does. - Io Katai (talk) 06:02, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Okay, he excludes intentionally designed scripts from his typology, so he simply doesn't classify Cree at all.

I don't know that the form of final consonant plays a role in the definition of these terms. Brahmic also uses final forms for C clusters, but is not argued to be more alphabetic than Ge'ez because of this. In Brahmi also final forms are not always graphically derivable from init forms; this is esp. true in Lepcha, which is very much like Eastern Cree in this regard. In most other Brahmic scripts it's only one or a few consonants which behave this way. But they're all considered abugidas.

I don't see how you can argue that Cree is more arbitrary/random that Ge'ez. To me it's clearly the opposite: Cree vowels are consistently marked, whereas many Ge'ez vowels have to be individually memorized. Concomitantly, the base forms of the C's are more easily recognized in Cree than in Ge'ez. kwami (talk) 07:40, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Firstly, the role of finals is a largely important factor. You cannot just ignore that 1/4th of a script as only an "exception" to its typology.

My first argument was to demonstrate how finals are independant consonants, and in order to do that, I had to show to you that there is no relation between mere superscripting another character. It's fine and all that Brahmic scripts can also have non-derived diacritics (consonant ones being used solely for clusters), however, these are still diacritics. Diacritics, as it is implied, are fully dependant on another character, as their base form usually differs (so that the 'y(a)' in 'kya' is not the same as just 'ya' - as you can see in the Lepcha script, and many others). - Finals have more flexibility than mere diacritics, which in CAS, are often distinguished (as seen in this chart).

A better example of an abugida using arguably full finals would probably be the New Tai Lue script; however there is no evidence suggesting that they're used outside final position, which could suggest their use does not differ any more than diacritics. Another script would be Phags-pa, which has two non-syllabic consonants used as initials/medials. (Edit: Funny, Wikipedia considers the New Tai Lue script an alphabet)

As for arbitrary/systematic; yes, CAS are a systematically devised script, however, the way the relationship is shown is more arbitrary in the sense that they do not have a base which shows the direct correspondance from which all other symbols are devised. Ge'ez, like Hanunó'o, on the other hand, has base consonants with inherent vowels, no different than any other abugida. Thus, considering the rotation despite a base could equally mean that Syllabics possess just as much featural qualities as abugida; outside this, each character could equally be considered a syllabary. However, where do you fit the other alphabetic portion of the script? - Io Katai (talk) 17:18, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

There isn't just one dimension to the function of any script. English is partially logographic, but we still call it an alphabet. Yes, CAS are different than Brahmic, just as the different CAS and Brahmic scripts are different from each other. Daniels created a very simplistic classification based on how vowels are written in CV syllables. I'm not saying that the finals aren't important, but AFAIK the classification *does* ignore them. If vowels in CV syllables are ignored or optional, we have an abjad. If they're equivalent to C's, a true alphabet. If obligatory but not equivalent to C's, then an abugida. The fact that different aspects of a script may mix features from various types is of course interesting, and needs to be covered, but distinct from the basic tripartite classification. If you look at the vast majority of CV syllables in any CAS script, you find that the shape of the letter indicates the consonant, and the orientation the vowel. Both are obligatory, but one is not equivalent to the other. That's the essence of an abugida. All the other details and complications are of course important, and need to be covered, but are not relevant at this simplistic level of analysis. kwami (talk) 18:28, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Well if the classification ignores them, than that's 35% of a script ignored. However, the emphasis placed on Syllabics' consonants-via-vowel-orientation would rather suggest to me a syllabary in nature rather than abugida. In a syllabary, a character represents an entire syllable, in an abugida, the base represents one syllable which is modified to represent others. I think the problem here is that Syllabics fits in both sides more or less equally (disregarding finals); as you state "If [V's in CV syllables are] obligatory but not equivalent to C's", this definition would include a syllabary. Syllabics has full-fledged vowels and consonants which are equal to that of an alphabet, but also make use of a series of syllabic characters which are equal to neither (In Ge'ez (see [ɨ] series) and Brahmic they're closer to consonants). And I think, proving English as a logography would require a whole other essay. -- Although I still believe this is misleading when you look at how the script is used typographically, I understand the point you're coming from, and perhaps I've made a bigger deal out of something that should be, for classification's sake, kept status quo. - Io Katai (talk) 02:13, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I think the point about a syllabary is that ka has nothing in common with ke. That's clearly not the case here. Abugidas are somewhat intermediate between a true alphabet and a syllabary, which is why they were called 'alphasyllabaries'. In syllabaries, vowels are equivalent to consonants: neither is written overtly; both are subsumed under the syllable. When you say, "in an abugida, the base represents one syllable which is modified to represent others", that's exactly what I see in syllabics: however you define the base, or even if you take it to be arbitrary, you modify it to represent the various vowels. kwami (talk) 06:18, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Citations to support claim Syllabary is an Abugida

User:Kwamikagami, you cited Aboriginals: Webster’s Quotations, Facts and Phrases. Icon Group International, 2008 as a source for the claim that the writing system discussed in Canadian Aboriginal syllabics is an "abugida", without giving a quotation or a page number. A title such as that seems to reflect an unlikely source for information on this topic. I am familiar with the published http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Talk:Canadian_Aboriginal_syllabics&action=edit&section=9literature on the syllabary and am not aware of such a claim made by a scholar who researches the question. Can you provide more information on your supporting documentation? A generic source of the type you give appears to fall short of Wikipedia's expectations for sourcing. The Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics article is almost completely undocumented, so there is a more general issues here.

This article could be greatly improved by providing appropriate referencing and removing material that is unsupported by acceptable sources. As it is, I am surprised that it could have been rated "B" on both Wikipedia:WikiProject Writing systems and Wikipedia:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America. Jomeara421 (talk) 00:03, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Ha! It was on p. 210, but that's a direct quote of this article as it was in 2005! Never mind; I deleted the ref.

As for better sources, all I currently have access to is Daniels & Bright. kwami (talk) 00:18, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Down to better sources. Daniels & Bright (page 4) define an abugida as "each character denotes a consonant accompanied by a specific vowel, and the other vowels are denoted by a consistent modification of the consonant symbols". This is actually quite true of all the Canadian "syllabaries", where each consonant is denoted by a shape oriented in a specific way to represent the following vowel and that each vowel orients the consonant shapes in the same regular way. That is, precisely, the definition of an abugida. Even though no one has called them "abugidas", that doesn't mean that they aren't. The notion is further reinforced by that fact that consonants that close a syllable are written separately and are not part of the "syllabic" symbol set. But just because Daniels (who wrote the definition of abugida on page 4) clearly defines abugida and the Canadian "syllabaries" clearly fall within that definition, doesn't mean that John Nichols (who wrote the chapter on Cree Syllabary) was required to use that technical term. The Canadian syllabaries have always been called syllabaries so that is the term that Wikipedia (since original research is frowned upon) must use for them. But just because we cannot call them abugidas doesn't mean that they are not in reality. Japanese, on the other hand, has a true CV syllabary since the vowels do not modify the consonant shapes in the same consistent way. It's completely dependent on the question of whether or not each vowel has a particular effect on all the consonant symbols. (Taivo (talk) 00:29, 14 March 2009 (UTC))

The question is how to classify the script. The color of the info box depends on whether it's a syllabary, abugida, etc. I agree that we should call them "syllabics". However, we should not claim that they are a syllabary. Since the two terms are so close, IMO we need to make it clear that they are not a syllabary.

There's also the question of how closely we should follow Daniels' definitions. Is 'abugida' the same thing as an 'alphasyllabary'? John Berry, Language Culture Type (2002:17) states that Canadian syllabics are an alphasyllabic system. He give three subtypes: Indic, with vowel by diacritic, Ethiopic, with vowel by distortion, and Canadian, with vowel by orientation. He also includes hangul in this category, because it's generally written in syllabic blocks, though hangul can (and has) also be written linearly. He also says that while abjads are often assigned to a separate category, it makes better sense to him to regard them as a subtype of alphasyllabary. This is an old debate, and AFAIK one of the reasons Daniels came up with new, more rigorously defined terms. kwami (talk) 00:39, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

You might find this link interesting: [23] The guy who runs the site is *the* purveyor of fine fonts and typography for First Nations in Canada and has been for many years. Akerbeltz (talk) 00:40, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

If the rotation is considered a 'modification' (which seems reasonable) then the syllabary is an abugida as Daniels defines the term. We'll just have to get someone to say it in print. :) Jomeara421 (talk)

(ec) Bill Bright sent me a preprint of a paper where he carefully distinguishes between an abugida and an alphasyllabary, but the the distinction is very subtle. Here's a quote from Henry Rogers Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach (2005, Blackwell), page 252: "To some degree, then, Cree is like an abugida where the vowels are written as diacritics; however, it is different from a typical abugida in that all vowels are written and there are no consonant clusters. In my view, the Cree writing system is basically moraic with some attributes of an abugida." Rogers also classifies Japanese and Cherokee as moraic systems and not syllabaries. Berry is clearly using "alphasyllabary" as a substitute for "abugida" since he calls Ethiopic an alphasyllabary and Daniels cites Ethiopic as the quintessential abugida ("abugida" is, indeed, composed from the initial sounds of the first few characters of the Ethiopic abugida). (Taivo (talk) 00:56, 14 March 2009 (UTC))

Many "syllabaries" are actually something more like semi-syllabaries or moraic systems. Your typical syllabary only has symbols for CV syllables, and more complex syllables are written with various combinations of those. It's very rare to have syllabaries with glyphs for each CCVC syllable in the language. kwami (talk) 01:20, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit conflict: response to Akerbeltz] Yes, I've seen that, and it's rather incoherent. For example, it claims Canadian cannot be an abugida because it does not use diacritics for vowels, despite an earlier admission that abugidas do not need to use diacritics for vowels. A second reason is that it does not have a virama, but many many typical abugidas do not have a virama. A third is that there are a number of consonant-only signs. But that depends on the language: is Western Cree not an abugida, while Eastern Cree—with superscripting the equivalent of Indic conjuncts—is an abugida? But then, the Lepcha script has special symbols for final consonants, very much like Western Cree, and no-one argues that it should not be considered an abugida. The only sensible counter-argument he presents is that Daniels defines abugidas as having a basic sign which indicates a consonant plus an inherent vowel, which is modified for other vowels, and that it's not possible to say which orientation is basic in Canadian, and therefore there is no one inherent vowel.

That strikes me as sophistry, but at least it's a coherent argument. He argues that one cannot use the superscript consonants to determine the inherent vowel, because different languages use differently orientated superscripts. However, that's no different than Indic: Bangla has a different inherent vowel than Hindi, for example. [P.S.: In Thai, the inherent vowel depends on the syllable structure, not the consonant letter.] Also, in Eastern Cree, raised ka and ma represent final k and m, but raised ko and mo represent final kw and mw. That is, the rounding of the vowel is used to convey the rounding of the consonant, and a is the inherent vowel. In some Ojibwe communities, it's i that's the basic vowel. The confounding case is the "mixed finals" communities, which use an a, o, or i glyph depending on the root. (I don't know what determines this, but I assume that it's an echo vowel, as you see in so many other scripts.) In that case, there really isn't a basic orientation. But should we conclude from this that Ojibwe syllabics is an abugida in some communities, but not in others? The more sensible conclusion IMO is that Daniels' definition was worded to convey the concept the best he could, and not meant to be verbatim legally binding. kwami (talk) 01:14, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and there's of course the reality that no script is "pure". Devanagari has a letter (not a diacritic) for final h that cannot be modified by diacritics, and one could argue that Ethiopic—which supplied the word "abugida", as Taivo pointed out—is not an abugida because the modifications of the consonants are not systematic. That is, Ethiopic itself violates the definition of an abugida as "a script whose basic signs denote consonants with an inherent vowel and where consistent modifications of the basic sign indicate other following vowels than the inherent one". The violation for Cree strikes me as about of the same magnitude. kwami (talk) 01:30, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Jomeara that it seems reasonable that Canadian syllabics are a straightforward abugida, but no one has said that in print (yet). (I think that Rogers is a bit off-track in defining "moraic" systems. Eliminate "moraic" from the mix and we are left with Japanese and Cherokee as syllabaries and Cree as an abugida.) (Taivo (talk) 01:21, 14 March 2009 (UTC))

Comrie, writing in The World Atlas of Language Structures (p 568 ff), classifies Canadian syllabics as alphasyllabic, as opposed to an alphabetic, consonantal, syllabic, or logographic script. That is, syllabics is not syllabic. He says, in attested alphasyllabic writing systems, the basic grapheme indicates a consonant, while a [...] transformation [is] applied, in order to indicate a combination of that consonant with a following vowel. [...] in contrast to the consonantal writing systems, in an an alphasyllabic system the vowels must be indicated. He says nothing about an inherent vowel. In Cree, a chevron is /p/, and its transformed through orientation to indicate the vowel. Another example of an abugida without inherent vowels: Thaana. In Thaana all vowels, and the lack of a vowel, are written with diacritics. The base consonant does not appear alone, so there is no inherent vowel. kwami (talk) 02:21, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Considering that "alphasyllabic" and "abugida" are usually used interchangeably, that looks like a published reference to Cree being an abugida ("alphasyllabic"). (Taivo (talk) 04:54, 14 March 2009 (UTC))

In response to Kwami’s comments on my article on languagegeek.com. I tried to make the article as coherent as possible and think it makes sense. As an aside, it should be pointed out that there is no one syllabics script. There are three different scripts: a) Algonquian/Dene/Inuktitut b) Blackfoot c)Carrier. Obviously b) and c) were modeled after a), but there is strikingly little in common between the three graphically. They are more distinct from each other than Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic.

1) That vowels must be written with diacritics: There’s a link which leads to a review of Daniels and Bright which describes an abugida as using said diacritics. If this is a requirement for an abugida (and many abugidas do use diacritics), then syllabics does not meet this requirement. If it isn’t a requirement, let’s move on.

2) The virama: Certainly, not all abugidas use viramas, but many do employ some method to delete the inherent vowel either with a mark or positionally. I would agree that Eastern Cree/Inuktitut does have a method to delete vowels (superscript the character) and that Western Cree/Dene/Carrier do not have such a method. While the Eastern Cree/Inuktitut vowel-deletion method is straightforward, the Blackfoot system is so obscure as to exclude it from having a vowel-deletion method. So, the majority of syllabics systems do not have a graphical way to show simple consonants. If this is a requirement for an abugida (and many abugidas do use viramas), then syllabics does not meet this requirement. If it isn’t a requirement, let’s move on.

3) Base characters: We seem to agree that it is impossible to determine what the base character is for any syllabics system. In devanagari, it is obviously the -a series, in Ethiopic it is also the -a series. In these cases, the a-series is the base to which modifications or diacritics are added. In syllabics, this question is moot, as no one character in a series is more "basic" than any other: ᐁ ᐃ ᐅ ᐊ . One could call the base character for this series “triangle”, but this is an abstract which never appears in writing, or we could arbitrarily say that the base character is the a-form ᐊ. If a base character is a requirement for an abugida (and every abugida I can think of does have base characters), then syllabics does not precisely meet this requirement. If one is satisfied with an abstract or arbitrary base character, I can live with that. I don’t believe Kwami’s example of Bengali using the ɔ-series is relevant here. In syllabics a-series and i-series indicate different rotations, not the phoneme which they represent. One could just as easily say East Cree uses a west/south-east superscripts for its finals, and some Ojibway dialects use north/north-east superscripts.

I feel the point of my article is: if syllabics is to be considered an abugida, it is a rather abstract version of one. It lacks the usual characteristics of an abugida: vowel-changing diacritics, virama, a discernable base character. Yes, some abugidas certainly lack one of these, but all three? Perhaps this is pushing the boundary of what an abugida is. What remains is that there is a predictable relationship between characters which share an onset consonant and a fairly reliable relationship between characters which share the same vowel. If these relationships alone are enough to classify syllabics as an abugida, then I agree that it’s an abugida and will happily retract my claims otherwise. The conclusion of the article points out that the most outstanding aspect of all the syllabics scripts is rotation. And perhaps this rotation is unique enough to classify syllabics not as an abugida, but as a script type in its own right.

To clarify: for the Ojibway system of writing finals, whether to use the i-finals or a-finals is merely a convention; there are no echo vowels or such. languagegeek (talk) 15:59, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that fundamentally it's not about diacritics or final consonants, but about the consistent relationship between marking rhymes no matter what the onset is--whether that consistent relationship is marked by diacritics or rotation. That's why I'm quite comfortable calling syllabics an abugida. A true syllabic system (such as Sumerian or Cherokee) shows no such relationships among the various rhymes. Once you start using separable diacritics, then the writing system is edging more towards an abjad. In that sense, I would almost consider syllabics to be more of a "pure" abugida--where there isn't anything really separable about the marking of the rhyme, but a consistent relationship nonetheless. Thus I would consider the following cline to be a fairly accurate one: Complex Syllabic (Sumerian) (CVC, etc.)- Simple Syllabic (Japanese, Cherokee) (CV) - Positional Abugida (Canadian Syllabics) (rhyme marked by non-diacritics) - Diacritic Abugida (Devanagari, Ethiopic) (rhyme marked by integral diacritics) - Abjad (Hebrew, Arabic) (rhyme marked by separable and invariable diacritics when marked at all) - Alphabet (Greek, Latin) (rhyme marked by distinct symbol). Just my thoughts on the matter. (Taivo (talk) 16:40, 30 June 2009 (UTC))

Image note on "Evan's script"

Please someone who knows what this is about, could you please correct the note under the image "Evan's script" in the "Basic principles" section: the phrase "Long vowels were now indicated by breaking" is self-contradictory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LGon (talk • contribs) 21:18, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Contradictory how? kwami (talk) 01:05, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Originally, Evans indicated long vowels by cutting out a chunk of the syllabic character’s type, in effect ‘breaking’ the character. See this link: http://www.languagegeek.com/syl/1841_syllabics_chart.html languagegeek (talk) 20:16, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, your explanation makes it very clear. If that phrase had read "Long vowels were now indicated by breaking the characters", I wouldn't have been confused. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LGon (talk • contribs) 03:13, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Font problems

I have fonts installed for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics yet the wikipedias for languages written in this script still appear as squares. Can anyone help me? Kanzler31 (talk) 22:12, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Are they Unicode fonts? — kwami (talk) 02:28, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Downloaded on Languagegeek on the multilingual help.Kanzler31 (talk) 02:35, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Just making sure, you got the AboriginalSerif.zip? Enter CBW, waits for audience applause, not a sausage. 04:33, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I have Aboriginal Serif fonts (+Pigiarniq and Aboriginal sans) yet still not working. Kanzler31 (talk) 00:16, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

OK FINALLY I found the problem here. I am using Safari (don't use Internet Explorer) yet it does not display properly, while if I use Internet Explorer the font displays perfectly. Is there any way to make Aboriginal Syllabics appear on Safari? Thanks.Kanzler31 (talk) 18:19, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I don't have Safari. Enter CBW, waits for audience applause, not a sausage. 22:44, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Infobox image

The image is annotated as Swampy Cree. The image file itself identifies the language as Plains Cree. Can someone with better information work out which is correct? -- Shimmin Beg (talk) 11:55, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

An editor who's no longer active added it as 'Plains Cree' and then immediately changed it to 'Swampy Cree'.[24] That doesn't look like an oversight, but I don't know if he's still around to ask why. — kwami (talk) 04:49, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Definition of Abugida?

The definition of abugida as "each character denotes a consonant accompanied by a specific vowel, and the other vowels are denoted by a consistent modification of the consonant symbols" is NOT good, since the “consistent modification” is not clear defined.

The right definition of abugida should be like “each character denotes a consonant accompanied by a specific vowel, and each other vowel is denoted by a consistent symbol appended to the consonant symbols.” This is also the original idea of Peter T. Daniels, who classified the scripts in the world. For example,प is pa, when ि(i) is appended, पि is pi.

The Canadian Aboriginal syllabics obviously don’t conform to the latter definition, because they don’t use appended symbols to mark vowels. And they even use a consistent modification to mark the consonants of the same place of articulation, e.g. ᒋ gi ᑭ ki; ᑎ ti ᕠ thi; ᐱpi ᕕvi. They seems really as if people appended symbols to mark the change of consonant. This is not the character of other abugidas.

The syllabics even don't conform the first difinition, because the modification is not consistent. ᐊ a ᐁ e; ᐸ pa ᐯ pe have 270°clockwise rotation. But ᑲ ka ᑫ ke; ᒪ ma ᒣ me have 180° clockwise rotation.

So the script should be classified into the syllabary, just like omniglot.com and Chinese Wikipedia. --217.110.18.206 (talk) 08:16, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Please read syllabary. In a syllabary, pa and pe would be unrelated letters. You also misunderstand Daniels. He named these abugidas after the Ethiopian script, and that in many cases modifies consonants rather than adding a symbol—and the modifications are not consistent. Also in the case of Brahmic abugidas, many of the appended vowels are not consistent either: they depend on the shape of the consonant. That does not make them syllabaries. Same thing here. Comrie, for example, accepts this as an abugida (he uses the term alphasyllabary). — kwami (talk) 00:47, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

The most important difference between syllabary and abugida is each character in abugida can be separated into consonant part and vowel part except for the basic characters, but characters in syllabary not.

For example, in the non-basic character पि in Hindi we can find the consonant part प for [p] and vowel part ि for [i]. But in kana ヘ there is neither consonant part nor vowel part. So we can see the abugidas is some like alphabet because it has somewhat “spelling”, too.

Has ᐱ a consonant part for [p]? NO.

Has ᐱ a vowel part for [i]? NO.

Since the syllabics have no “spelling”. It is Syllabary.--93.206.129.17 (talk) 15:45, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I've never seen that definition. I think you need to read syllabary. — kwami (talk) 20:56, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

The syllabary was written by you without any reliable reference. Why should we read and accept the wrong definition? According to your private definition, Yi script is also Abugida. Please compare the characters in the table Yi_script#Syllabary. For example, the 2nd and 3rd rows. --93.206.135.186 (talk) 15:18, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

No, Yi is a syllabary with a diacritic for one tone which alternates morphologically with another, rather like the umlaut diacritic in German. Even if all the tones were written with diacritics, it would be OR to claim that makes it an abugida, because abugidas are not defined by how they mark tone. (Personally I think it's a nice distinction to make, but in the case of Yi, it would still not make it an abugida, any more than the German alphabet is an abugida just because it uses a diacritic for the vowels ä ö ü.)

If you wish to change the definition of "syllabary", it's up to you to find the references that support your claim. — kwami (talk) 11:35, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Final hk

I believe I am missing the point... @Kwamikagami:, by adding "a logogram for Christ" to the sentence "The final hk, however, is ᕽ, a small version of the Greek letter Χ kh" are you saying James Evans picked the Greek letter chi to represent final hk because it has been used as a logogram for Christ? DRMcCreedy (talk) 14:59, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. At least, that's what the source I was using said. So while most finals are from shorthand, that one is not. I would assume that its choice was a reflection of Evans' missionary work. I don't read our text as saying that its use in syllabics is as a logogram for Christ, but we should certainly clarify if that's how you're reading it. — kwami (talk) 17:41, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I am reading it that (wrong) way. I would change to The final hk, however, is ᕽ, a small version of the Greek letter Χ kh chosen because Χ is a logogram for Christ.[your reference here] -- DRMcCreedy (talk) 17:04, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Please cite your reference. DRMcCreedy (talk) 16:53, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Writing system category definition semantics

This issue has been bothering me since wikipedia has introduced me to the classification of writing systems.

To me, it's clear that there currently are multiple definitions of "Abugida" and "Syllabary" at play on wikipedia. This is troubling to me because they draw the line on different sides of Syllabics.

For example Syllabary contains 'they are synthetic, if they vary by onset, rime, nucleus or coda, or systematic, if they vary by all of them'. While this definition of a categorization of Syllabary isn't cited, it's still a section of text on wikipedia that pushes the definition of "Syllabary" to a point of describing Syllabics.

Second example, Abugida states, while deliberately being precise, 'An Abugida is defined as "a type of writing system whose basic characters denotes consonants followed by a particular vowel, and in which diacritics denote other vowels".' This definition of Abugida is below the line of defining Syllabics, Despite these two quotations, the majority of the rest of wikipedia (reasonably) treats Syllabics as both not being a Syllabary and as being an Abugida.

My primary issue is that among the strict definitions for Abugida and Syllabary given in the wiki, neither actually covers Syllabics. I'm operating under the impression that, for whatever reason, possibly its influences, Syllabics is being treated as an Abugida for a mixture of reasons:

1. It's convenient to place it under a definition which is established in the literature (regardless of which definition it's placed under)
2. Internet pop science having aligned Syllabics under being an Abugida in order to distinguish its impressive regularity from that of "Proper Syllabaries" such as the kana

My issue with categorizing it under Abugida is in two points:

First, no matter what anyone says, there's no reliable inherent vowel in any of the consonant series of Evans' script with which to derive a base character. Even if a particular variant of Syllabics can point to the final consonant diacritics as being a base character, this cannot be assigned to the entire family. Please note that this first point is only applying to the context of that formal definition given in the Abugida page, where it specifies [base character which implies a particular vowel].

Second, interpreting "diacritics" as not extra marks or contour mutations but instead a broad concept of consistent modification foregoes the formal definition.

On the second point, the page Abugida contains the following statement, with a citation: 'There are three principal families of abugidas, depending on whether vowels are indicated by modifying consonants by diacritics, distortion, or orientation.[8]'

However, the citation in question is not describing abugidas, but an abstract family of "alphasyllabic scripts".

The writer goes on to describe from logographs to the alphabet, in a spectrum. But not does he call Syllabics an "Abugida"; he calls Syllabics an "alphasyllabic system". His description of this term says "syllables are recognized as units, but are represented by symbols that acknowledge an awareness of the underlying consonants and vowels."

He lists the strict abugidas, and says "the basic symbol represents a consonant and implies by default a simple vowel. Diacritics are added to represent a change in that associated vowel."

He then describes Ethiopic with "the basic symbol represents a consonant, and the associated vowel is shown by systematic distortion".

He then describes Syllabics as "the basic symbol represents a consonant, and its orientation [...] reveals the vowel".

He even, of course, includes Hangul in this family of alphasyllabic systems: "consonants and vowels are fully analyzed and each has its own grapheme, but these [...] are recombined in compound glyphs or clusters that each portray a syllable".

The description of Ethiopic and Syllabics disagree with the formal definition of "Abugida" given in differentiating it from Alphasyllabics (which, by the way, is also a term being used differently in the above list of citations). The inclusion of Hangul under the term "alphasyllabic system" is even more damning to the fact that this citation is using completely different categorization than wikipedia.

This means that this citation was not used as a means of articulating on subcategories of abugida and what systems fall under which category. Instead, the relevance to the section it's cited in is only in describing the visually obvious: [These categories denote vowels in different ways].

I strongly believe that a particular set of problems is present in the way wikipedia currently handles the spectrum of phonetically descriptive non-alphabetical systems.

1. Particular definitions are chosen, and the variety of distinctions between them in the literature is not accurately or consistently applied.
2. There exists at least one citation which applies different terminology than the cited material uses.
3. Even when the terminology in the article and citation are using the same words, morphology can change their meaning. For example, Abugida uses "alphasyllabary" and defines it different than the above list of quotations uses "alphasyllabic".

I believe that one of the following should be done:

1. Writing system definitions on wikipedia should all be made strict and conservative, and systems like Syllabics that do not literally fall under those definitions should be classified under broader or even strictly descriptive terms.
2. Valid definitions of writing system terminology should be outlined, even if not conservative, according to how wikipedia is currently approximately using those terms (and errors corrected where necessary); then, external information must be vetted according to ensure that wikipedia is referencing it equivalently.
3. Extensive explanation of the varying existing definitions, semantics, and categorizations of "alphasyllabic systems" should be permeated through all those pages where any distinction more advanced than [pure abugida, i.e. those with vowel mutation diacritics] is necessary.

This challenge is under the Syllabics talk page instead of the Abugida one due to the fact that my argument is broadly from the perspective of the difficulty of consistently applying the categorization of this system with the descriptions given in the present wikipedia.

This challenge was edited to articulate on a choice of words.

Wareya (talk) 20:23, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Prejudiced artificial classification?

I've never heard about these scripts before; but I find the article rather interesting. Let me summarise what I understood from the article; and please tell me if I have misunderstood somethings.

• The script originated from the work of one known person, a missionary. It later was changed and acquired variants, by the habits or concious efforts of other people using it for different languages or dialects.
• The script was developed in order to be used in existing languages (or mainly in one of a group of related languages with similar features), since the orthography of the inventor's native language was not well suited for this 'target language'. The newly invented script, on the other hand, was well adapted for its target language, and was readily accepted by many of its speakers.
• The original inventor of the script took an interest also in other languages, and knew some scripts rather different from the one employed in his native language. He used features from such scripts, where this seemed convenient for achieving better correspondence to his target language.
• The script was eventually a success, both among the speakers of the immediate target language, and in a higher or lower degree for speakers of related languages.
• The script, or rather its descented variants, are in officially sanctioned use today; however, with some smaller fracas, caused by the tendency of a naturally used script to diverge (especially as it is used for several languages) on the one hand, and a wish from the authorities for a unified general usage on the other.

Did I get this roughly right? And do you agree that the description in its main parts also largely might be applicable for the eventual development of the Cyrillic alphabet − although its original variant (probably close to the one named Kyrillovitsa in Old Church Slavonic) was created not by one missionary, but by two missionary brothers, Saints Cyril and Methodius. (For instance, I may remind you that the Cyrillic sha in general is believed to be derived from the Hebrew shin; and that one of the problems the brothers had to address was the distinction between the "hard" and the "soft" vowels, still a very important feature of slavic languages.)

Some speculation: In fact, I find it likely that several other scripts originally were similarly originated by one or a few people, although we today have no idea of their names. The oldest known Phoenician script like variant, the Proto-Sinaitic, shows both a principal affinity with the Egyptian hieroglyphic script, and important differences. In the hieroglyphic text, the main phonetic value is given by one hieroglyph for each consonant; but these are mixed with lots of hieroglyphs carrying other meanings. My guess is that one or a few people, who knew at least one of the Egyptian scripts (and possibly also knew some cuneiform script) had the idea of using only consonant signs, as an adaption to some Canaanite dialect. Of course this hypothesis is virtually impossible to prove (although it could be disproved). Similarly, the earliest percussor of the Devanagari may have been developed by someone knowing some semitic script.

All this comparison and speculation justifiedly could be brandished WP:OR, and I do not suggest any of it to be included in any one of our articles. However, it might motivate a removal of Category:Artificial scripts from this article. I cannot see the validity in calling any writing system created for use in a language not having any established written form "artificial", just since we happen to know its inventor(s), and these made some (or many) innovations making the script more suitable for their target language. If the innovations made their work successful (and thereby also ensured that they had numerous followers who gradually changed the script, then this script is not "artificial".

Of course, as I said, I know very little about the Canadian syllabics; and there may be some good reason I'm not aware of for considering this but not other innovative scripts artificial. If so, please explain this reason to me! JoergenB (talk) 12:34, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

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Competing claims as to who created the script -- no edit war needed

There have been competing edits on the topic of who created the script. A recent editor reinserted the claim for Mistanaskowew. I hope nobody starts an edit war on this. I have additional data and I believe I have a way to word it that will be acceptable to many. But it may take me a week. Pete unseth (talk) 17:24, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Either move the article or change the lead

I can understand why one might want to remove aboriginal from the name, but on the other hand it does seem to have some standing as an official name for the script. Regardless, the article name and the lead should match. If you cannot convince other editors to accept to move the article, then change the name in the lead back. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.61.180.106 (talk) 17:41, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Devanagari?

The section that compares the Syllablics to Devanagari has been on this article for a long time, despite having very few sources, and none that contain the comparison of the characters. As far as I can tell, the original source for the claim that Evans was inspired by Devanagari was the Cree Syllablics article in The World's Writing Systems, but I can't tell where the author of that article got that specific information. Murdoch makes no mention of Devanagari in his dissertation. If anyone has any sources that go into more detail on this, they should probably be added to that section. Otherwise, I think the lack of citations and seemingly speculative nature of the relation to Devangari warrants removal of that section. The visual resemblances are weak. Baphopup (talk) 00:39, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

I think the Devanagari connection is exaggerated and support removing it. The World's Writing Systems simply states "Struck by reports in the mission press of the success of the Cherokee syllabary, and familiar with non-Roman shorthand and Devanagari scripts, Evans experimented with alphabetic and syllabic non-Roman characters for writing Cree". That's not a lot to go on. DRMcCreedy (talk) 01:16, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Dalby (2015) says "It is partly inspired by English shorthand, partly by Evans' knowledge of Devanagari and other Indic scripts." Campbell & King (2018) say it "was inspired by both Devanagari letters ... and Pitman shorthand." Bellos (2021) The Language Lover's Puzzle Book says Evans "borrowed ideas from other writing systems, such as the Indian Devanagari alphabet, which provided the shapes of some of his characters. (For example, Devanagari ट (for ta) became ᑕ)." I don't know who Bellos is, and probably not a RS, but the book is recommended by David Crystal. — kwami (talk) 06:27, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

The other sources are no more specific than the The World's Writing Systems article, and the Bellos book is pretty clearly getting its information from this very Wikipedia article. It also claims that "Evans also copied innovations from Sir Isaac Pitman’s recently published shorthand. These included simple geometrical strokes, varying the thickness of lines to indicate voiced and unvoiced consonants (although this element was soon lost due to the difficulties of printing hard and soft lines)..." which is a claim I've never seen anywhere but here. The World's Writing Systems says "In the earliest syllabic printing, long vowels were shown by slashed or bold syllables; the superposed dot was intended as the vowel length diacritic only in handwriting," making no claim as to whether bold syllablics or slashed syllablics came first. Murdoch writes in his dissertation that: "When Evans improvised a new method of showing long and short vowels for the press that was eventually delivered to Rossville, he used Pittman's[sic] approach of thickening lines," or in other words, the slashed characters came first. So, there's no reliable source that makes the sort of comparisons seen on this page, and the one source that does clearly got its information from this unsourced article. Still seems worthy of deletion to me. Baphopup (talk) 13:16, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

No, it doesn't mean slashed letters came first. If it only says "a new method", we don't know if there'd been a third method or no method at all before that. — kwami (talk) 19:18, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

First, if you read the source I was referencing and not just the quote I pulled from it you'd see that Murdoch describes a slashed syllabary as "Evans' First Syllabary" in figure 2.01. Second, if you want a better pull quote, here you go: "The first style to be used was that of the inventor, James Evans. The type was carved of oak for use on a home-made press which was fabricated from an old fur press. This printing style had two characteristic features. First, long syllables were denoted by broken 1ines: ᐊ a became [broken triangle character facing west] aa. Secondly, there was a unique series of syllabic characters for:

[The SP- series.]

These letters were printed on a press which was hand inked, and not with the best of materials. As a result, it is often difficult to distinguish those characters which were deliberately broken from those which are broken as the result of poor inking or poor fonts. For a full chart of this style, see Table 1, Evan's press style.

Only months before Evans left his mission station at Norway House, the press he had long requested, finally arrived. This press was not likely ever used by Evans and is not believed to have begun operation until 1846. It was used by William Mason and later Thomas Hurlburt until 1857. The press was an old one bearing the date of manufacture, 1786. It was often short of types or fonts. The effects of winter and building space were frequent problems. Englísh, Chippewa(Ojibwa or Saulteaux) and Cree were all possible. The unique features of the syllabary printed on this press were: the denoting of 1ong sy11ables by a thickening of the 1ines: ᐊ a ᐊ aa. ..." Baphopup (talk) 20:14, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Also, you deleted referenced statements [and their sources] claiming they largely reiterate material elsewhere, but they didn't. False edit-summaries aren't a promising approach. — kwami (talk) 19:27, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

What information that had a valid source did I delete that is not present in the article elsewhere? Baphopup (talk) 20:15, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

The origin of the final X, for one. — kwami (talk) 03:59, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh, I think there's some confusion there. The Dalby source only says "There is a special sign X for 'Christ'," but I don't think that was referring to the -hk final. If you look in The World's Writing Systems on page 603, figure 61, you'll see that in the Eastern syllabary, they use(d?) a special "X" character for Christ, and I think this is what Dalby is talking about. I'm pretty sure this is separate from the -hk final, as the Christ symbol isn't given a phonemic value in the chart and seems to be written full size. So, this should be mentioned somewhere in the article, but it should reflect this information.

You say "for one," can you elaborate? Baphopup (talk) 12:54, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

For Square form, some irregularity should be allowed?

I have checked the sample displayed for the Square form of the Canadian Aboriginal syllabics: most of the characters fit into somewhat oblong rectangles (not squares), which are also somewhat different from each other.

I guess these "slacks" are allowed by a realistic concept of the Square form. I would propose making the description more tolerant, ~ "Square form […] same or similar letter heights, and occupying (relatively) uniform, square or near-square spaces" – something like that, in a good English style though. :) Javítgató (talk) 09:40, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Why doesn't this article need citations

Like, seriously...there are entire sections that have no evidence no proof no sources. And apparently that's fine, for this article, but not others? 2604:3D09:D78:1000:A8E9:1C49:D36E:23FF (talk) 03:08, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

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