Editing Cherokee syllabary (section)

==History==

===Early history===
[[File:Henry Inman - Sequoyah - Google Art Project.jpg|200px|thumb|left|upright|[[Sequoyah]], inventor of the Cherokee syllabary]]
[[File:Original Cherokee Syllabary.jpg|250px|thumb|left|Sequoyah's original syllabary characters, showing both the script forms and the print forms]]

Around 1809, impressed by the "talking leaves" of European written languages, [[Sequoyah]] began work to create a writing system for the Cherokee language. After attempting to create a [[logograph|character for each word]], Sequoyah realized this would be too difficult and eventually created characters to represent syllables. He worked on the syllabary for twelve years before completion and dropped or modified most of the characters he originally created.

After the syllabary was completed in the early 1820s, it achieved almost instantaneous popularity and spread rapidly throughout Cherokee society.{{sfn|Walker|Sarbaugh|1993|p=70–72}} By 1825, the majority of Cherokees could read and write in their newly developed orthography.{{Sfn|McLoughlin|1986|p=353}}

Some of Sequoyah's most learned contemporaries immediately understood that the syllabary was a great invention. For example, when [[Albert Gallatin]], a politician and trained linguist, saw a copy of Sequoyah's syllabary, he believed it was superior to the English alphabet in that literacy could be easily achieved for Cherokee at a time when only one-third of English-speaking people achieved the same goal.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.teachushistory.org/indian-removal/resources/success-civilizing-project-among-cherokee|title=Success of the "civilizing" project among the Cherokee &#124; Teach US History}}</ref> He recognized that even though the Cherokee student must learn 85 characters instead of 26 for English, the Cherokee could read immediately after learning all the symbols. The Cherokee student could accomplish in a few weeks what students of English writing might require two years to achieve.<ref>Langguth, A. J. (2010). ''Driven West: Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears to the Civil War''. New York, Simon & Schuster. p. 71. {{ISBN|978-1-4165-4859-1}}.</ref>

In 1828, the order of the characters in a chart and the shapes of the characters were modified by Cherokee author and editor [[Elias Boudinot (Cherokee)|Elias Boudinot]] to adapt the syllabary to printing presses.<ref name="Indian Country Today-2010">{{cite news |title=Cherokee Nation creates syllabary |access-date=5 November 2019 |work=Indian Country Today |date=March 16, 2010  |url=https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2010/03/16/cherokee-nation-creates-syllabary-keypad-81743 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161001234723/https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2010/03/16/cherokee-nation-creates-syllabary-keypad-81743 |archive-date=October 1, 2016}}</ref> The 86th character was dropped entirely.{{Sfn|Kilpatrick|Kilpatrick|1968|p=23}} Following these changes, the syllabary was adopted by the ''[[Cherokee Phoenix]]'' newspaper, later ''[[Cherokee Advocate]]'', followed by the ''Cherokee Messenger'', a bilingual paper printed in [[Indian Territory]] in the mid-19th century.{{Sfn|Sturtevant|Fogelson|2004|p=362}}

In 1834, [[Samuel Worcester]] made changes to several characters in order to improve the readability of Cherokee text. Most notably, he inverted the ''do'' character (Ꮩ) so that it could not be confused with the ''go'' character (Ꭺ).{{Sfn|Giasson|2004|p=29–33}} Otherwise, the characters remained remarkably invariant until the advent of new typesetting technologies in the 20th century.{{Sfn|Giasson|2004|p=35}}

===Later developments===
[[File:Cherokee-02346.jpg|thumb|Bear statue by Charles Saunooke displaying the Sequoyah Syllabary, outside the [[Museum of the Cherokee People]] in [[Cherokee, North Carolina|Cherokee]], [[North Carolina]], 2017]]
[[File:Cherokee Central Schools.jpg|thumb|Sign in [[Cherokee, North Carolina]]]]

[[File:Cherokee stop sign.png|thumb|upright|175px|Bilingual stop signs with Cherokee syllabary in use today in [[Tahlequah, Oklahoma]]]]

In the 1960s, the Cherokee Phoenix Press began publishing literature in the Cherokee syllabary, including the ''Cherokee Singing Book''.{{Sfn|Sturtevant|Fogelson|2004|p=750}} A Cherokee syllabary typewriter ball was developed for the [[IBM Selectric]] in the late 1970s. Computer fonts greatly expanded Cherokee writers' ability to publish in Cherokee. In 2010, a Cherokee keyboard cover was developed by [[Roy Boney, Jr.]] and [[Joseph Erb]], facilitating more rapid typing in Cherokee. The keyboard cover is now used by students in the [[Cherokee Nation]] Immersion School, where all coursework is written in syllabary.<ref name="Indian Country Today-2010"/>

In August 2010, the Oconaluftee Institute for Cultural Arts in [[Cherokee, North Carolina]] acquired a [[letterpress]] and had the Cherokee syllabary recast to begin printing one-of-a-kind fine art books and prints in syllabary.<ref name="SCC">[http://www.southwesterncc.edu/news/10-jul-sept/letterpress.htm "Letterpress arrives at OICA"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101130021125/http://www.southwesterncc.edu/news/10-jul-sept/letterpress.htm |date=November 30, 2010 }} ''Southwestern Community College'' (retrieved 21 Nov 2010)</ref> Artists Jeff Marley and [[Frank Brannon]] completed a collaborative project on October 19, 2013, in which they printed using Cherokee syllabary type from [[Southwestern Community College (North Carolina)|Southwestern Community College]] in the print shop at [[New Echota]]. This was the first time syllabary type has been used at New Echota since 1835.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.northwestgeorgianews.com/calhoun_times/news/local/new-echota-days-begin-this-saturday/article_5da73114-37fd-11e3-91e7-0019bb30f31a.html|title=New Echota days begin this Saturday|publisher=Calhoun Times|date=Oct 18, 2013|access-date=21 July 2017|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

The syllabary is finding increasingly diverse usage today, from books, newspapers, and websites to the street signs of [[Tahlequah, Oklahoma]], and [[Cherokee, North Carolina]]. An increasing corpus of children's literature is printed in Cherokee to meet the needs of students in Cherokee language immersion schools in Oklahoma and North Carolina.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Neal |first1=Dale |title=Beloved children's book translated into Cherokee |url=https://www.citizen-times.com/story/life/2016/05/26/beloved-childrens-book-translated-into-cherokee/84588624/ |publisher=Asheville Citizen Times |access-date=28 February 2019 |date=2016-05-26}}</ref>

===Possible influence on Liberian Vai syllabary===
In the 1960s, evidence emerged suggesting that the Cherokee syllabary of North America provided a model for the design of the [[Vai syllabary]] in Liberia.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Summitt |first1=April R. |title=Sequoyah and the Invention of the Cherokee Alphabet |date=2012 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-0-313-39177-4 |page=83 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g-8tJXrLCQoC&dq=Vai+syllabary+cherokee&pg=PA143 |access-date=25 July 2022 |language=en}}</ref> The Vai syllabary emerged about 1832/33. This was at a time when American missionaries were working to use the Cherokee syllabary as a model for writing Liberian languages.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Appiah |first1=Anthony |last2=Gates (Jr.) |first2=Henry Louis |editor1-last=Appiah |editor1-first=Anthony |editor2-last=Gates Jr. |editor2-first=Henry Louis= |editor1-link=Henry Louis Gates Jr. |title=Encyclopedia of Africa |date=2010 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-533770-9 |page=552 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A0XNvklcqbwC&dq=Vai+syllabary+cherokee&pg=RA1-PA552 |access-date=25 July 2022 |language=en}}</ref> Another link appears to have been Cherokee who emigrated to Liberia after the invention of the Cherokee syllabary (which in its early years spread rapidly among the Cherokee) but before the inventions of the Vai syllabary. One such man, Austin Curtis, married into a prominent [[Vai people|Vai]] family and became an important Vai chief himself. It is perhaps not coincidence that the "inscription on a house" that drew the world's attention to the existence of the Vai script was in fact on the home of Curtis, a Cherokee.{{Sfn | Tuchscherer |Hair| 2002}}  There also appears to be a connection between an early form of [[Bassa Vah alphabet|written Bassa]] and the earlier Cherokee syllabary.