Western Cree syllabary

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Notes:

[1] The vowel ê is not used in Woods Cree.

[2] th-series only present in Woods Cree.

[3] Woods Cree usually uses a small double dagger (‡ ) to indicate a final th, but this character is not in the Unicode standard [Ed.: It isn't? so why do I have it here in gucharmap as ‡ ?].

[4] A dot following any syllable indicates that the vowel is preceded by a w, which comes between the initial consonant and the vowel.

[5] hk is a very common consonant cluster at the end of words because it is part of the morpheme used for the locative case. It is used so frequently that it has its own final.

[6] l and r only appear in loan words in western Cree dialects. They may appear before or after a syllable as necessary to indicate the pronunciation of the borrowed word.

Note that the th-series closely resembles the y-series characters. The th phoneme in Woods Cree appears largely in contexts where a y appears in Plains and Swampy Cree. Recongising the relationship between the two sounds, Cree writers use a characters which are almost identical to the y-series.

In addition to these characters, western Cree syllabics indicates the w phoneme by placing a dot after the syllable. Thus, the syllable wa is indicated with ᐘ , pwi by ᐽ and so on. The dot used to mark the w can be combined with the dot marking length. The syllable wâ is marked as ᐚ and pwî as ᐿ . The dot used to indicate w is placed before the syllable in Eastern Cree syllabics. This and the way finals are written are the two principal differences between eastern and western Cree syllabics.

The dot placed above syllables with long vowels is often dropped in real texts unless necessary to disambiguate the word. Long and short vowels may be written identically and require context to diambiguate.

Also, western Cree writers may use the character ᙮ [a ᕁ but small, and on the baseline] to indicate the end of sentence, instead of the Roman alphabet period so that it is not confused with the diacritic indicating the w sound.

An example of Plains Cree written in western Syllabics:

ᑲᒫᒋᐲᑭᐢᒁᑎᑯᐟ ᐆᐦᐃ -- ᑳᒫᒋᐲᑭᐢᒁᑎᑯᐟ ᐆᐦᐃ ᐅᐢᑳᔭ ᐁᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᔨᐟ᙮ ᒫᑲ ᓇᒨᔭ ᓂᓯᑐᐦᑕᐍᐤ ᐊᐘ ᐅᐢᑭᓂᑮᐢ ᑖᓂᓯ ᐁᐃᑘᔨᐟ ᐋᑕ ᐏᐢᑕ ᐁᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐟ᙮ --

In Standard Roman Orthography:

Kâ-mâci-pîkiskwâtikot ôhi oskâya ê-nêhiyawêyit. Mâka namôya nisitohtawêw awa oskinikîs tânisi ê-itwêyit âta wîsta ê-nêhiyawêt.

English translation:

The young people then began to speak in the language of his ancestry - Nêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree language). Unfortunately the young man could not make out what they were saying even though he was of the same nation; Nêhiyaw (Plains Cree people).

(Example from [1].)

External links

Cree syllabics at languagegeek.com (Website has downloadable Unicode syllabics fonts)

References

ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ: ᐃᑗᐏᓇ / nëhiýawëwin: itwëwina / Cree: Words Compiled by Arok Wolvengrey. Canadian Plains Research Centre, University of Regina, Saskatchewan. 2001. ISBN 0-88977-127-8