Scripts
Cherokee Syllabary
CHERR-uh-kee SIL-uh-bair-ee
Also Known As Cherokee Alphabet A common informal name; the Cherokee Nation's own sources are explicit that it is technically inaccurate, since each character is a syllable rather than a single sound.
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Origin from 1821
The Cherokee syllabary is a writing system for the Cherokee language invented by Sequoyah, working alone over roughly twelve years and completing it in 1821 without ever learning to read or write English. Its 86 characters each stand for a whole spoken syllable of Cherokee rather than a single sound, so it is a syllabary rather than an alphabet. The Cherokee National Council formally adopted it in 1825, and the Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper, began printing in Cherokee and English at New Echota in 1828. Several characters visually resemble Latin letters that Sequoyah copied from a printed spelling book, but he assigned them entirely unrelated Cherokee syllable values, so the resemblance is a borrowing of shapes rather than a shared ancestry with the Latin alphabet.
Facts
Directionality In Use Since (Year)Sequoyah began working on the system around 1809 and completed the 86-character syllabary in 1821, a roughly twelve-year development. Learn More
Sequoyah's Twelve Year Invention
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Sequoyah could not read or write in English, or in any other written language, when he decided sometime around 1809 that the Cherokee people needed a writing system of their own. He first tried assigning one symbol to each word, an approach that collapsed almost immediately under the sheer number of words in the language. His real insight, reached only after years of failed attempts, was to break Cherokee down into its syllables instead, a far smaller and more manageable set. He drew on shapes he recognized from a printed English spelling book for some of his eighty six characters, borrowing their forms without any idea what sound they represented in English, and simply assigned each one a Cherokee syllable value of his own choosing. In 1821 he demonstrated the finished system to Cherokee leaders with the help of his daughter, Ahyokah, who had grown up learning it alongside him and could read messages written in it that she had never seen before, proof to a skeptical audience that the system genuinely worked. The Cherokee National Council formally adopted it four years later, and within a generation Cherokee literacy rates using the new syllabary outpaced those of neighboring English speaking communities.
Print, Power and the Cherokee Phoenix
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Adoption of Sequoyah's syllabary in 1825 created an immediate practical problem: printing it required a typeface that did not exist anywhere. Missionary Samuel Worcester, working with the Cherokee Nation, had metal type cast for all eighty six characters at a foundry in Boston, and in doing so made choices Sequoyah himself had not: he reordered the characters for teaching purposes and rotated some letterforms to avoid visual collisions with English type. The Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper anywhere, began printing at New Echota in 1828 using that typeface, running Cherokee and English in parallel columns under editor Elias Boudinot. Linguist Ellen Cushman has argued that Worcester's standardization subtly reshaped the system, bending its internal logic toward a more Latin-alphabet-style ordering and obscuring relationships Sequoyah's original handwritten characters may have encoded. How much of that original design survives in the printed, standardized syllabary used today remains an open question. What is not in doubt is the newspaper's impact: it gave the Cherokee Nation a public voice in its own language at a moment, on the eve of forced removal, when that voice mattered enormously.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Influenced By
Latin Script, Scripts Sequoyah, unable to read English, borrowed roughly two dozen letterforms he had seen in a printed English spelling book, along with some Greek and Hebrew derived shapes, but assigned them entirely different Cherokee syllable values. The syllabary is not descended from the Latin alphabet; it borrows some of its shapes without any of its sound values.
Script Of
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Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
In Use Since (Year)
Cushman argues missionary Samuel Worcester's 1827 print standardization reorganized Sequoyah's original character ordering toward a Latin-alphabet-style logic, obscuring internal relationships the original handwritten system may have encoded. How much of Sequoyah's original design intent survives in the modern printed syllabary remains an open scholarly question.
A dissenting reading, from Ellen CushmanEllen Cushman, The Cherokee Syllabary: A Writing System in Its Own Right, 2011
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