Santwyne/Sandbox/Learning Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics

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Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics (ᑎᑎᕋᐅᓯᖅ ᓄᑕᐊᖅ, titirausiq nutaaq, or ᖃᓂᐅᔮᖅᐸᐃᑦ, qaniujaaqpait) are a set of abugidas (syllable alphabets) used for several Aboriginal languages in Canada from the Algonquian, Inuit, and (formerly) Athabaskan language families. Inuktitut (ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ), the language of the territory of Nunavut (ᓄᓇᕗᑦ), is the most common language which uses this script.

Syllabics were invented by English missionary James Evans for the Swampy Cree and Ojibwe languages and was expanded to a large number of languages thereafter. Evans was influenced by the Cherokee and Devanagari scripts.

Structure

Syllabics are written left to right, with punctuation used in the same way as English or French. Different languages use different sets of characters.

The Canadian Aboriginal syllabic system is classified as an abugida, which means that each character represents a syllable, not a single letter as in English. Syllables are constructed by rotating a consonant letter based on which vowel follows it; dots are added to lengthen the vowel sound. Small versions of the letter are used to show a single consonant, like ᒃ and ᑦ (k and t) in ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ (Inuktitut)

Example

The diagram below shows the sets of characters for the consonant t.

Short vowels				Long vowels
	ᑎ ti				ᑏ tii
ᑕ ta	ᑦ t	ᑐ tu		ᑖ taa	ᑦ t	ᑑ tuu
	ᑌ tai				Not used