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Historic Cherokee syllabary order used by Sequoyah, with the now-obsolete letter Ᏽ in red. There are two main character orders for the Cherokee script. The usual order for Cherokee runs across the rows of the syllabary chart from left to right, top to bottom—this is the one used in the Unicode block.
First, the Cherokee alphabet is technically not an alphabet at all, but a syllabary. That means each Cherokee symbol represents a syllable, not just a consonant or a vowel. So using the English alphabet, the Cherokee word ama ("water") is written with three letters: a, m, and a.
Cherokee syllabary. The Cherokee syllabary was invented by George Guess/Gist, a.k.a. Chief Sequoyah, of the Cherokee, and was developed between 1809 and 1824. At first Sequoyah experimented with a writing system based on logograms, but found this cumbersome and unsuitable for Cherokee.
In 1826, the Cherokee National Council commissioned George Lowrey and David Brown to translate and print eight copies of the laws of the Cherokee Nation in the new Cherokee language typeface using Sequoyah's system, but not his original self-created handwritten syllable glyphs.
The Cherokee syllabary is the foundation for the Cherokee language. See and hear the entire Cherokee syllabary here.
When the Cherokee Nation first purchased a printing press, some of Sequoyah’s written characters were replaced by analogues from the Roman (Latin) alphabet or were created out of modified Roman letters for purposes of clarity, design, and aesthetics.
These Cherokee syllabary charts and Cherokee number posters are available to download.
Cherokee Nation Education Services Group Cherokee Language Program language@cherokee.org www.cherokee.org ᏣᎳᎩ ᎠᏰᎵ ᏧᎾᏕᎶᏆᏍᏗ ᏗᏂᏍᏕᎵᏍᎩ ᎤᎾᏓᎷᎬ ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ ᎤᏙᏢᏒ language@cherokee.org www.cherokee.org SOUNDS REPRESENTED BY VOWELS a, as a in father, or short as a in rival
Learn about the story of Sequoyah, a Cherokee man who developed an alphabet for the Cherokee language in 1821, in this video segment adapted from AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: “We Shall Remain.” Like most Native American groups at the time, the Cherokees did not have a written language.
In 1821, Sequoyah finished creating a writing system that was not only transformative for the Cherokee Nation, it also provided a template for other languages.