87-796: The Kazan River ( Inuktitut Harvaqtuuq , Inuktitut syllabics ᓴᕐᕙᖅᑑᖅ; meaning "strong rapids", "the big drift" or "place of much fast flowing water"), is a Canadian Heritage River located in Nunavut , Canada. The Dene name for the river was Kasba-tue meaning "white partridge river." The name was apparently changed to Kazan in the late 19th century due to the influence of Order of Mary Immaculate missionaries. The river headwaters are in northern Saskatchewan at Kasba Lake, and it flows north for about 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) before emptying into Baker Lake ( 64°09′00″N 95°30′00″W / 64.15000°N 95.50000°W / 64.15000; -95.50000 ( Baker Lake (Kazan River) ) ), on
174-605: A Bible in Cree syllabics . By then, both Protestant and Catholic missionaries were using and actively propagating syllabic writing. Missionary work in the 1850s and 1860s spread syllabics to western Canadian Ojibwe dialects ( Plains Ojibwe and Saulteaux ), but it was not often used over the border by Ojibwe in the United States . Missionaries who had learned Evans' system spread it east across Ontario and into Quebec , reaching all Cree language areas as far east as
261-407: A contrasts with ᐋ â, and ᒥ mi contrasts with ᒦ mî . Although Cree ê only occurs long, the script made length distinctions for all four vowels. Not all writers then or now indicate length, or do not do so consistently; since there is no contrast, no one today writes ê as a long vowel. Reflecting the shorthand principles on which it was based, syllabics may be written plain , indicating only
348-721: A glottal stop when after a vowel (e.g., maꞌna ), or separates an n from an ng (e.g., avin'ngaq ) or an r from an rh (e.g., qar'rhuk ). In April 2012, with the completion of the Old Testament , the first complete Bible in Inuktitut, translated by native speakers, was published. Noted literature in Inuktitut has included the novels Harpoon of the Hunter by Markoosie Patsauq , and Sanaaq by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk . The Inuktitut syllabary used in Canada
435-529: A consonant and the next begins with a vowel, the intermediate consonant is written as a syllable with the following vowel. For example, the Plains Cree word pīhc-āyi-hk "indoors" has pīhc as its first morpheme, and āyi as its second, but is written ᐲᐦᒑᔨᕽ pīh-cā-yihk. In other cases, a "syllable" may in fact represent only a consonant, again due to the underlying structure of the language. In Plains Cree, ᑖᓂᓯ tānisi "hello" or "how are you?"
522-612: A few based on their pronunciation of Inuktitut , but it quickly became obvious that the number of basic sounds and the simple model of the syllable in the Evans system was inadequate to the language. With the assistance of Edwin Arthur Watkins , he dramatically modified syllabics to reflect these needs. In 1876, the Anglican church hired Edmund Peck to work full-time in their mission at Great Whale River , teaching syllabics to
609-501: A large number of syllables; this made them quite long when written with the Latin script. He began to experiment with creating a more syllabic script that he thought might be less awkward for his students to use. In 1840, Evans was relocated to Norway House in northern Manitoba . Here he began learning the local Swampy Cree dialect. Like the closely related Ojibwe , it was full of long polysyllabic words. As an amateur linguist, Evans
696-552: A merchant in England; and now he acquired familiarity with the newly published Pitman shorthand of 1837. The local Cree community quickly took to this new writing system. Cree people began to use it to write messages on tree bark using burnt sticks, leaving messages out on hunting trails far from the mission. Evans believed that it was well adapted to Native Canadian languages, particularly the Algonquian languages with which he
783-520: A missionary. In the 1930s, Chief Fine Day of the Sweetgrass First Nation told Mandelbaum the following account: A Wood Cree named Badger-call died and then became alive again. While he was dead he was given the characters of the syllabary and told that with them he could write Cree. Strike-him-on-the-back learned this writing from Badger-call. He made a feast and announced that he would teach it to anyone who wanted to learn. That
870-474: A number of new forms to write the Blackfoot language . French Roman Catholic missionaries were the primary force for expanding syllabics to Athabaskan languages in the late 19th century. The Oblate missionary order was particularly active in using syllabics in missionary work. Oblate father Adrien-Gabriel Morice adapted syllabics to Dakelh , inventing a large number of new basic characters to support
957-460: A press for him, believing that native literacy was something to be discouraged. Evans, with immense difficulty, constructed his own press and type and began publishing in syllabics. Evans left Canada in 1846 and died shortly thereafter. However, the ease and utility of syllabic writing ensured its continued survival, despite European resistance to supporting it. In 1849, David Anderson , the Anglican bishop of Rupert's Land , reported that "a few of
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#17327835664081044-469: A root morpheme to which other morphemes are suffixed. Inuktitut has hundreds of distinct suffixes, in some dialects as many as 700. However, it is highly regular, with rules that do not have exceptions like in English and other Indo-European languages , though they are sometimes very complicated. One example is the word qangatasuukkuvimmuuriaqalaaqtunga ( ᖃᖓᑕᓲᒃᑯᕕᒻᒨᕆᐊᖃᓛᖅᑐᖓ ) meaning 'I'll have to go to
1131-592: A scheme called Qaniujaaqpait or Inuktitut syllabics , based on Canadian Aboriginal syllabics . In the 1860s, missionaries imported this system of Qaniujaaqpait , which they had developed in their efforts to convert the Cree to Christianity , to the Eastern Canadian Inuit. The Netsilik Inuit in Kugaaruk and north Baffin Island adopted Qaniujaaqpait by the 1920s. In September 2019,
1218-407: A separate glyph, but abugidas , in which consonants are modified in order to indicate an associated vowel—in this case through a change in orientation (which is unique to Canadian syllabics). In Cree, for example, the consonant p has the shape of a chevron. In an upward orientation, ᐱ, it transcribes the syllable pi . Inverted, so that it points downwards, ᐯ, it transcribes pe . Pointing to
1305-577: A type of ink and then showed him how to write on white birch bark." He also received many teachings about the spirits which he recorded in a birch bark book. When the one good man returned to his people he taught them how to read and write. "The Cree were very pleased with their new accomplishment, for by now the white men were in this country. The Cree knew that the white traders could read and write, so now they felt that they too were able to communicate among themselves just as well as did their white neighbors." (Stevenson 21) Stevenson (aka Wheeler) comments that
1392-430: A unified orthography called Inuktut Qaliujaaqpait, based on the Latin alphabet without diacritics, was adopted for all varieties of Inuktitut by the national organization Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami , after eight years of work. It was developed by Inuit to be used by speakers of any dialect from any region, and can be typed on electronic devices without specialized keyboard layouts. It does not replace syllabics, and people from
1479-468: A vestige of the retroflex consonants of Proto-Inuit . Inuinnaqtun has one fewer consonant, as /s/ and /ɬ/ have merged into /h/ . All dialects of Inuktitut have only three basic vowels and make a phonological distinction between short and long forms of all vowels. In Inuujingajut —Nunavut standard Roman orthography—long vowels are written as a double vowel. All voiceless stops are unaspirated, like in many other languages. The voiceless uvular stop
1566-445: A voice speaking Calling Badger's name. Soon after, Calling Badger fell ill and the people heard he had passed away. During his wake three days later, while preparing to roll him in buffalo robes for the funeral, the people discovered that his body was not stiff like a dead person's body should be. Against all customs and tradition the people agreed to the widow's request to let the body sit one more night. The next day Calling Badger's body
1653-512: A vowel in joined morphemes, in couple grammatical words, or in pedagogical materials to indicate the consonant value following it is fortis .) The vowels fall into two sets, the back vowels -a and -u, and the front vowels -e and -i. Each set consists of a lower vowel , -a or -e, and a higher vowel, -u or -i. In all cases, back-vowel syllables are related through left-right reflection: that is, they are mirror images of each other. How they relate to front-vowel syllables depends on
1740-477: Is a family of writing systems used in a number of indigenous Canadian languages of the Algonquian , Inuit , and (formerly) Athabaskan language families. These languages had no formal writing system previously. They are valued for their distinctiveness from the Latin script and for the ease with which literacy can be achieved. For instance, by the late 19th century the Cree had achieved what may have been one of
1827-650: Is based on the Cree syllabary devised by the missionary James Evans . The present form of the syllabary for Canadian Inuktitut was adopted by the Inuit Cultural Institute in Canada in the 1970s. Inuit in Alaska, Inuvialuit , Inuinnaqtun speakers, and Inuit in Greenland and Labrador use Latin alphabets. Though conventionally called a syllabary , the writing system has been classified by some observers as an abugida , since syllables starting with
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#17327835664081914-439: Is called Nunavimmiutut ( ᐃᓄᑦᑎᑐᑦ ). This dialect is also sometimes called Tarramiutut or Taqramiutut ( ᑕᕐᕋᒥᐅᑐᑦ or ᑕᖅᕐᕋᒥᐅᑐᑦ ). Sub dialects of Inuktitut in this region include Tarrarmiut and Itivimuit. Itivimuit is associated with Inukjuak , Quebec, and there is an Itivimuit River near the town. The Nunatsiavut dialect ( Inuttitut ᓄᓇᑦᓯᐊᕗᒻᒥᐅᑐᑦ or, often in government documents, Labradorimiutut )
2001-499: Is how I learned it. Badger-call also taught the writing to the missionaries. When the writing was given to Badger-call he was told 'They [the missionaries] will change the script and will say that the writing belongs to them. But only those who know Cree will be able to read it.' That is how we know that the writing does not belong to the whites, for it can be read only by those who know the Cree language. Fine Day's grandson Wes Fineday gave
2088-915: Is recognized as one of eight official native tongues in the Northwest Territories. It also has legal recognition in Nunavik —a part of Quebec—thanks in part to the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement , and is recognized in the Charter of the French Language as the official language of instruction for Inuit school districts there. It also has some recognition in NunatuKavut and Nunatsiavut —the Inuit area in Labrador —following
2175-592: Is relatively close to the South Baffin dialect, but not identical. Because of the political and physical boundary between Nunavik and Nunavut, Nunavik has separate government and educational institutions from those in the rest of the Inuktitut-speaking world, resulting in a growing standardization of the local dialect as something separate from other forms of Inuktitut. In the Nunavik dialect, Inuktitut
2262-658: Is spoken in all areas north of the North American tree line , including parts of the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador , Quebec , to some extent in northeastern Manitoba as well as the Northwest Territories and Nunavut . It is one of the aboriginal languages written with Canadian Aboriginal syllabics . It is recognized as an official language in Nunavut alongside Inuinnaqtun and both languages are known collectively as Inuktut . Further, it
2349-442: Is the home of some 24,000 Inuit, over 80% of whom speak Inuktitut. This includes some 3,500 people reported as monolinguals. The 2001 census data shows that the use of Inuktitut, while lower among the young than the elderly, has stopped declining in Canada as a whole and may even be increasing in Nunavut. The South Baffin dialect ( Qikiqtaaluk nigiani , ᕿᑭᖅᑖᓗᒃ ᓂᒋᐊᓂ ) is spoken across the southern part of Baffin Island , including
2436-407: Is unrelated to other syllables with the same consonant or vowel. The original script, which was designed for Western Swampy Cree, had ten such letterforms: eight for syllables based on the consonants p- , t- , c- , k- , m- , n- , s- , y- (pronounced /p, t, ts, k, m, n, s, j/), another for vowel-initial syllables , and finally a blended form, now obsolete, for the consonant cluster sp- . In
2523-444: Is used for consonant clusters that begin with /s/: ᔌ spwa, ᔍ stwa, ᔎ skwa, and ᔏ scwa. The Cree languages the script was initially designed for had no such clusters. In Inuktitut, something similar is used not to indicate sequences, but to represent additional consonants, rather as the digraphs ch, sh, th were used to extend the Latin letters c, s, t to represent additional consonants in English. In Inuktitut,
2610-403: Is used for either a set of syllables with the same vowel, or a set with the same initial consonant. Thus the n-series is the set of syllables that begin with n, and the o-series is the set of syllables that have o as their vowel regardless of their initial consonant. A series of small raised letters are called "finals". They are usually placed after a syllable to indicate a final consonant, as
2697-546: Is usually written as q, but sometimes written as r. The voiceless lateral fricative is romanized as ɬ, but is often written as &, or simply as l. /ŋ/ is spelt as ng, and geminated /ŋ/ is spelt as nng. Inuktitut, like other Eskaleut languages , has a very rich morphological system, in which a succession of different morphemes are added to root words to indicate things that, in languages like English, would require several words to express. (See also: Agglutinative language and Polysynthetic language .) All words begin with
Kazan River - Misplaced Pages Continue
2784-598: Is we can tell you stories and if you listen to those stories in the sacred manner with an open heart, an open mind, open eyes and open ears, those stories will speak to you." In December 1959, anthropologist Verne Dusenberry, while among the Plains Cree on the Rocky Boy reservation in Montana , was told a similar narrative by Raining Bird: According to Raining Bird "the spirits came to one good man and gave him some songs. When he mastered them, they taught him how to make
2871-473: Is written as if it had three syllables. Because the first syllable has the stress and the syllable that follows has a short /i/ , the vowel is dropped. As a result, the word is pronounced "tānsi" with only two syllables. Syllabication is important to determining stress in Algonquian languages, and vice versa, so this ambiguity in syllabics is relatively important in Algonquian languages. The word "series"
2958-509: The Inuit and translating materials into syllabics. His work across the Arctic is usually credited with the establishment of syllabics among the Inuit. With the support of both Anglican and Catholic missionary societies, by the beginning of the 20th century the Inuit were propagating syllabics themselves. In the 1880s, John William Tims , an Anglican missionary from Great Britain , invented
3045-489: The Naskapi . Attikamekw , Montagnais and Innu people in eastern Quebec and Labrador use Latin alphabets . In 1856, John Horden , an Anglican missionary at Moose Factory, Ontario , who adapted syllabics to the local James Bay Cree dialect, met a group of Inuit from the region of Grande Rivière de la Baleine in northern Quebec. They were very interested in adapting Cree syllabics to their language. He prepared
3132-455: The Pollard script , which is used to write various Hmong-Mien and Lolo-Burmese languages. Other missionaries were reluctant to use it, but it was rapidly indigenized and spread to new communities before missionaries arrived. A conflicting account is recorded in Cree oral traditions , asserting that the script originated from Cree culture before 1840. Per these traditions, syllabics were
3219-474: The Unicode Consortium considers syllabics to be a "featural syllabary" along with such scripts as hangul , where each block represents a syllable, but consonants and vowels are indicated independently (in Cree syllabics, the consonant by the shape of a glyph, and the vowel by its orientation). This is unlike a true syllabary, where each combination of consonant and vowel has an independent form that
3306-518: The United States by communities that straddle the border. Cree syllabics were created in a process that culminated in 1840 by James Evans , a missionary, probably in collaboration with Indigenous language experts. Evans formalized them for Swampy Cree and Ojibwe . Evans had been inspired by the success of Sequoyah's Cherokee syllabary after encountering problems with Latin-based alphabets, and drew on his knowledge of Devanagari and Pitman shorthand . Canadian syllabics would in turn influence
3393-480: The orthography called for hyphens between the syllables of words, giving written Ojibwe a partially syllabic structure. However, his students appear to have had conceptual difficulties using the same alphabet for two different languages with very different sounds, and Evans himself found this approach awkward. Furthermore, the Ojibwe language was polysynthetic but had few distinct syllables, meaning that most words had
3480-471: The 1760s that was based on the Latin script. (This alphabet is distinguished by its inclusion of the letter kra , ĸ.) They later travelled to Labrador in the 1800s, bringing the Inuktitut alphabet with them. The Alaskan Yupik and Inupiat (who additionally developed their own syllabary ) and the Siberian Yupik also adopted Latin alphabets. Most Inuktitut in Nunavut and Nunavik is written using
3567-426: The 1840 version, all were written with a light line to show the vowel was short and a heavier line to show the vowel was long: ᑲ ka , ᑲ kâ ; however, in the 1841 version, a light line indicated minuscules ("lowercase") and a heavier line indicated majuscules ("uppercase"): ᑲ ka , ᑲ KA or Ka ; additionally in the 1841 version, an unbroken letterform indicated a short vowel, but for a long vowel, Evans notched
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3654-637: The 1960s, the European attitude towards the Inuktitut language started to change. Inuktitut was seen as a language worth preserving, and it was argued that knowledge, particularly in the first years of school, is best transmitted in the mother tongue. This set off the beginning of bilingual schools. In 1969, most Inuit voted to eliminate federal schools and replace them with programs by the General Directorate of New Quebec [ fr ] ( Direction générale du Nouveau-Québec, DGNQ ). Content
3741-536: The 2001 census, mostly in the town of Nain . Inuktitut is seriously endangered in Labrador. Nunatsiavut also had a separate dialect reputedly much closer to western Inuktitut dialects, spoken in the area around Rigolet . According to news reports, in 1999 it had only three very elderly speakers. Though often thought to be a dialect of Greenlandic , Inuktun or Polar Eskimo is a recent arrival in Greenland from
3828-579: The Canadian Arctic; there they are co-official with the Latin script in the territory of Nunavut . They are used regionally for the other large Canadian Algonquian language, Ojibwe , as well as for Blackfoot . Among the Athabaskan languages further to the west, syllabics have been used at one point or another to write Dakelh (Carrier), Chipewyan , Slavey , Tłı̨chǫ (Dogrib), and Dane-zaa (Beaver). Syllabics have occasionally been used in
3915-545: The Canadian census as Inuktut. Before contact with Europeans, Inuit learned skills by example and participation. The Inuktitut language provided them with all the vocabulary required to describe traditional practices and natural features. Up to this point, it was solely an oral language . However, European colonialism brought the schooling system to Canada. The missionaries of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches were
4002-612: The Commonwealth Braille and Talking Book Cooperative, developed a Braille code for the Inuktitut language syllabics. This code is based on representing the syllabics' orientation. Machine translation from Unicode UTF-8 and UTF-16 can be performed using the Liblouis Braille translation system<ref>{{Cite web|url= https://liblouis.io/ |title=Liblouis |access-date= which includes an Inuktitut Braille translation table. The book ᐃᓕᐊᕐᔪᒃ ᓇᓄᕐᓗ ( The Orphan and
4089-458: The Dene may be found along the river. Although the Inuit today no longer live along the river, they do still travel it to hunt and fish. The first European to visit the area was Samuel Hearne in 1770 at Yathkyed Lake. However, the river was not mapped until visited by Canadian geologist and cartographer Joseph Tyrrell in 1894. Explorer Knud Rasmussen also visited the area in 1921–1924 during
4176-1058: The Eastern Canadian Arctic, arriving perhaps as late as the 18th century. Throughout Inuit Nunaat and Inuit Nunangat the Inuktut is used to refer to Inuktitut and all other dialects. It is used by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami , the Inuit Circumpolar Council , and the Government of Nunavut throughout Inuit Nunaat and Inuit Nunangat . Eastern dialects of Inuktitut have fifteen consonants and three vowels (which can be long or short). Consonants are arranged with six places of articulation : bilabial , labiodental , alveolar , palatal , velar and uvular ; and three manners of articulation : voiceless stops , voiced continuants and nasals , as well as two additional sounds—voiceless fricatives . Natsilingmiutut has an additional consonant /ɟ/ ,
4263-500: The Fifth Thule Expedition. The river has also become a popular destination for kayaking and canoeists . Although many species of wildlife may be observed along the river, it is the barren-ground caribou (Qamanirjuaq and Beverly herds) for which it is most well known. Over 300,000 caribou migrate through the area and it is said to be the largest migration of any land animal. Other wildlife that may be observed in
4350-552: The Indians can read by means of these syllabic characters; but if they had only been taught to read their own language in our letters, it would have been one step towards the acquisition of the English tongue." But syllabics had taken root among the Cree (indeed, their rate of literacy was greater than that of English and French Canadians ), and in 1861, fifteen years after Evans had died, the British and Foreign Bible Society published
4437-456: The Inuktitut language. As of 2012 , "Pirurvik, Iqaluit 's Inuktitut language training centre, has a new goal: to train instructors from Nunavut communities to teach Inuktitut in different ways and in their own dialects when they return home." Quebec is home to roughly 15,800 Inuit, nearly all of whom live in Nunavik . According to the 2021 census, 80.9% of Quebec Inuit speak Inuktitut. The Nunavik dialect ( Nunavimmiutitut , ᓄᓇᕕᒻᒥᐅᑎᑐᑦ )
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#17327835664084524-627: The Polar Bear ) became the first work ever translated into Inuktitut Braille, and a copy is held at the headquarters of the Nunavut Public Library Services at Baker Lake . Although as many of the examples as possible are novel or extracted from Inuktitut texts, some of the examples in this article are drawn from Introductory Inuktitut and Inuktitut Linguistics for Technocrats . Canadian Aboriginal syllabics Canadian syllabic writing , or simply syllabics ,
4611-496: The airport: The western part of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories use a Latin alphabet usually called Inuinnaqtun or Qaliujaaqpait , reflecting the predispositions of the missionaries who reached this area in the late 19th century and early 20th. Moravian missionaries, with the purpose of introducing Inuit to Christianity and the Bible , contributed to the development of an Inuktitut alphabet in Greenland during
4698-423: The area include muskox , wolverine , peregrine falcon and many species of fish. Inuktitut Inuktitut ( / ɪ ˈ n ʊ k t ə t ʊ t / ih- NUUK -tə-tuut ; Inuktitut: [inuktiˈtut] , syllabics ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ ; from inuk , 'person' + -titut , 'like', 'in the manner of'), also known as Eastern Canadian Inuktitut , is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It
4785-425: The basic consonant–vowel outline of speech, or pointed , with diacritics for vowel length and the consonants /w/ and /h/ . Full phonemic pointing is rare. Syllabics may also be written without word division , as Devanagari once was, or with spaces or dots between words or prefixes. The only punctuation found in many texts is spacing between words and ᙮ for a full stop. Punctuation from the Latin script, including
4872-472: The extension of syllabics to languages it was not initially designed for. In some of the Athabaskan alphabets, finals have been extended to appear at mid height after a syllable, lowered after a syllable, and at mid height before a syllable. For example, Chipewyan and Slavey use the final ᐟ in the latter position to indicate the initial consonant dl ( /tɬ/ ). In Naskapi, a small raised letter based on sa
4959-450: The face of the type sorts , such that in print the letterform was broken. A handwritten variant using an overdot to indicate a long vowel is now used in printing as well: ᑕ ta , ᑖ tâ . One consonant, w , had no letterform of its own but was indicated by a diacritic on another syllable; this is because it could combine with any of the consonants, as in ᑿ kwa , as well as existing on its own, as in ᐘ wa . There were distinct letters for
5046-426: The first movable type for syllabics, he found that he could not satisfactorily maintain the distinction between light and heavy typeface for short and long vowels. He instead filed across the raised lines of the type, leaving gaps in the printed letter for long vowels. This can be seen in early printings. Later still a dot diacritic, originally used for vowel length only in handwriting, was extended to print: Thus today ᐊ
5133-399: The first ones to deliver formal education to Inuit in schools. The teachers used the Inuktitut language for instruction and developed writing systems. In 1928 the first residential school for Inuit opened, and English became the language of instruction. As the government's interests in the north increased, it started taking over the education of Inuit. After the end of World War II, English
5220-472: The following account on CBC radio Morningside in two interviews in 1994 and 1998: Fineday the younger explained that Calling Badger came from the Stanley Mission area and lived ten to fifteen years before his grandfather's birth in 1846. On his way to a sacred society meeting one evening Calling Badger and two singers came upon a bright light and all three fell to the ground. Out of the light came
5307-440: The graphic form of the consonants. These follow two patterns. Symmetrical, vowel, p-, t-, sp-, are rotated 90 degrees (a quarter turn) counter-clockwise, while those that are asymmetrical top-to-bottom, c-, k-, m-, n-, s-, y-, are rotated 180 degrees (a half turn). The lower front-vowel ( -e ) syllables are derived this way from the low back-vowel ( a ) syllables, and the high front-vowel ( -i ) syllables are derived this way from
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#17327835664085394-452: The higher back-vowel ( -u ) syllables. The symmetrical letter forms can be illustrated by arranging them into a diamond: And the asymmetrical letter forms can be illustrated by arranging them into a square: These forms are present in most syllabics scripts with sounds values that approach their Swampy Cree origins. For example, all scripts except the one for Blackfoot use the triangle for vowel-initial syllables. By 1841, when Evans cast
5481-440: The highest rates of literacy in the world. Syllabics are an abugida , where glyphs represent consonant–vowel pairs, determined by the rotation of the glyphs. They derive from the work of linguist and missionary James Evans . Canadian syllabics are currently used to write all of the Cree languages from including Eastern Cree , Plains Cree , Swampy Cree , Woods Cree , and Naskapi . They are also used to write Inuktitut in
5568-590: The invention of Calling Badger ( Mistanaskowêw , ᒥᐢᑕᓇᐢᑯᐍᐤ ), a Cree man. Legend states that Badger had died and returned from the spirit world to share the knowledge of writing with his people. Some scholars write that these legends were created after 1840. Cree scholar Winona Stevenson explores the possibility that the inspiration for Cree syllabics may have originated from a near-death experience of Calling Badger. Stevenson references Fine Day cited in David G. Mandelbaum 's The Plains Cree who states that he learned
5655-407: The left, ᐸ, it is pa, and to the right, ᐳ, po . The consonant forms and the vowels so represented vary from language to language, but generally approximate their Cree origins. Because the script is presented in syllabic charts and learned as a syllabary, it is often considered to be such. Indeed, computer fonts have separate coding points for each syllable (each orientation of each consonant), and
5742-702: The legend is commonly known among the Cree. However, there is no known surviving physical evidence of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics before Norway House . Linguist Chris Harvey believes that the syllabics were a collaboration between English missionaries and Indigenous Cree- and Ojibwe-language experts, Such as the Ojibwe Henry Bird Steinhauer (Sowengisik) and Cree translator Sophie Mason, who worked alongside Evans at his time in Norway House. Canadian "syllabic" scripts are not syllabaries , in which every consonant–vowel sequence has
5829-415: The nine consonants -p , -t , -c , -k , -m , -n , -s , -y , and w when they occurred at the end of a syllable. In addition, four "final" consonants had no syllabic forms: -h , -l , -r , and the sequence -hk . These were originally written midline, but are now superscripted. (The glyph for -hk represents the most common final sequence of the language, being a common grammatical ending in Cree, and
5916-577: The opposite side of the mouth of the Thelon River . Along its course the river flows through several lakes, including Ennadai Lake and Yathkyed Lake , over the Kazan Falls (25 metres (82 ft)), down a red sandstone gorge and through both boreal forest and tundra . It is the last section of the river, below Ennadai Lake, that is above the timber line and is designated a Canadian Heritage River. The abundance of wildlife along and close to
6003-460: The people, were to be used to write down the spirit languages, and for the Cree people to communicate among themselves. (Stevenson 20) When asked whether the story was meant to be understood literally, Wes Fineday commented: "The sacred stories ... are not designed necessarily to provide answers but merely to begin to point out directions that can be taken. ... Understand that it is not the work of storytellers to bring answers to you. ... What we can do
6090-537: The period (.), may also be used. Due to the final c resembling a hyphen, a double hyphen ⟨᐀⟩ is used as the Canadian Aboriginal syllabics hyphen. Some common terms as used in the context of syllabics The full-sized characters, whether standing for consonant-vowel combinations or vowels alone, are usually called "syllables". They may be phonemic rather than morphophonemic syllables. That is, when one morpheme (word element) ends in
6177-460: The radically more complicated phonetics of Athabaskan languages. Father Émile Petitot developed syllabic scripts for many of the Athabaskan languages of the Northwest Territories , including Slavey and Chipewyan . Cree influenced the design of the Pollard script in China. Cree oral traditions state that the script was gifted to the Cree through the spirit world, rather than being invented by
6264-484: The ratification of its agreement with the government of Canada and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The 2016 Canadian census reports that 70,540 individuals identify themselves as Inuit, of whom 37,570 self-reported Inuktitut as their mother tongue. The term Inuktitut is also the name of a macrolanguage and, in that context, also includes Inuvialuktun , and thus nearly all Inuit dialects of Canada. However, Statistics Canada lists all Inuit languages in
6351-449: The regions are not required to stop using their familiar writing systems. Implementation plans are to be established for each region. It includes letters such as ff , ch , and rh , the sounds for which exist in some dialects but do not have standard equivalents in syllabics. It establishes a standard alphabet but not spelling or grammar rules. Long vowels are written by doubling the vowel (e.g., aa , ii , uu ). The apostrophe represents
6438-761: The river attracted both the Caribou Inuit and the Chipewyan Sayisi Dene for about 5,000 years. Originally, the Caribou Inuit did not live in the area but returned to the coast for the winter. In the 18th century, Dene use of the area declined and Caribou Inuit, especially the Harvaqtuurmiut ("people of the Harvaqtuuq") and Ihalmiut bands, began to live along the river year round. Remnants of Ihalmiut campsites, and those of
6525-876: The same consonant have related glyphs rather than unrelated ones. All of the characters needed for the Inuktitut syllabary are available in the Unicode block Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics . The territorial government of Nunavut , Canada, has developed TrueType fonts called Pigiarniq ( ᐱᒋᐊᕐᓂᖅ [pi.ɡi.aʁ.ˈniq] ), Uqammaq ( ᐅᖃᒻᒪᖅ [u.qam.maq] ), and Euphemia ( ᐅᕓᒥᐊ [u.vai.mi.a] ) for computer displays. They were designed by Vancouver -based Tiro Typeworks. Apple Macintosh computers include an Inuktitut IME (Input Method Editor) as part of keyboard language options. Linux distributions provide locale and language support for Iñupiaq , Kalaallisut and Inuktitut. In 2012 Tamara Kearney, Manager of Braille Research and Development at
6612-555: The syllabary from Strikes-him-on-the-back who learned it directly from mistanâskowêw. In 1827, Evans, a missionary from Kingston upon Hull, England , was placed in charge of the Wesleyan mission at Rice Lake, Ontario . Here, he began to learn the eastern Ojibwe language spoken in the area and was part of a committee to devise a Latin alphabet for it. By 1837, he had prepared the Speller and Interpreter in English and Indian, but
6699-555: The territorial capital Iqaluit . This has in recent years made it a much more widely heard dialect, since a great deal of Inuktitut media originates in Iqaluit . Some linguists also distinguish an East Baffin dialect from either South Baffin or North Baffin dialect , which is an Inuvialuktun dialect. As of the early 2000s, Nunavut has gradually implemented early childhood, elementary, and secondary school-level immersion programs within its education system to further preserve and promote
6786-472: The ᕽ -hk in ᔨᕽ yihk above. However, the Cree consonant h, which only has a final form, begins a small number of function words such as ᐦᐋᐤ hāw. In such cases the "final" ᐦ represents an initial consonant and therefore precedes the syllable. The use of diacritics to write consonants is unusual in abugidas. However, it also occurs (independently) in the Lepcha script . Finals are commonly employed in
6873-682: Was acquainted with the Devanagari script used in British India ; in Devanagari, each letter stands for a syllable, and is modified to represent the vowel of that syllable. Such a system, now called an abugida , would have readily lent itself to writing a language such as Swampy Cree, which had a simple syllable structure of only eight consonants and four long or short vowels. Evans was also familiar with British shorthand, presumably Samuel Taylor's Universal Stenography , from his days as
6960-554: Was familiar. He claimed that "with some slight alterations" it could be used to write "every language from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains." Evans attempted to secure a printing press and new type to publish materials in this writing system. Here, he began to face resistance from colonial and European authorities. The Hudson's Bay Company , which had a monopoly on foreign commerce in western Canada, refused to import
7047-529: Was formed in 2005. In Nunavik, the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement recognizes Inuktitut in the education system. Nunavut's basic law lists four official languages: English, French, Inuktitut, and Inuinnaqtun . It is ambiguous in state policy to what degree Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun can be thought of as separate languages. The words Inuktitut , or more correctly Inuktut ('Inuit language') are increasingly used to refer to both Inuinnaqtun and Inuktitut together, or "Inuit languages" in English. Nunavut
7134-626: Was now taught in Inuktitut, English, and French. Inuktitut became one of the official languages in the Northwest Territories in 1984. Its status is secured in the Northwest Territories Official Language Act . With the split of the territory into the NWT and Nunavut in 1999, both territories kept the Language Act. The autonomous area Nunatsiavut in Labrador made Inuktitut the government language when it
7221-588: Was once spoken across northern Labrador . It has a distinct writing system, developed in Greenland in the 1760s by German missionaries from the Moravian Church . This separate writing tradition, the remoteness of Nunatsiavut from other Inuit communities, has made it into a distinct dialect with a separate literary tradition. The Nunatsiavummiut call their language Inuttut ( ᐃᓄᑦᑐᑦ ). Although Nunatsiavut claims over 4,000 inhabitants of Inuit descent, only 550 reported Inuktitut to be their native language in
7308-419: Was seen as the language of communication in all domains. Officials expressed concerns about the difficulty for Inuit to find employment if they were not able to communicate in English. Inuit were supposed to use English at school, work, and even on the playground. Inuit themselves viewed Inuktitut as the way to express their feelings and be linked to their identity, while English was a tool for making money. In
7395-460: Was still not stiff so the old people began rubbing his back and chest. Soon his eyes opened and he told the people he had gone to the Fourth World, the spirit world, and there the spirits taught him many things. Calling Badger told the people of the things he was shown that prophesized events in the future, then he pulled out some pieces of birch bark with symbols on them. These symbols, he told
7482-454: Was unable to get its printing sanctioned by the British and Foreign Bible Society . At the time, many missionary societies were opposed to the development of native literacy in their own languages, believing that their situation would be bettered by linguistic assimilation into colonial society. Evans continued to use his Ojibwe orthography in his work in Ontario. As was common at the time,
7569-451: Was used for common -nk in Ojibwe.) The consonants -l and -r were marginal, only found in borrowings, baby talk, and the like. These, and -h , could occur before vowels, but were written with the final shape regardless. ( -l and -r are now written the size of full letters when they occur before vowels, as the finals were originally, or in some syllabics scripts have been replaced with full rotating syllabic forms; -h only occurs before
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