These completed the eighty-five characters of
his alphabet, which was thus an alphabet of syllables, and not of
letters.
It was a subject of astonishment to scientific men that a language
so copious only embraced eighty-five syllables. This is chiefly
accounted for by the fact that every Cherokee syllable ends in a
vocal or nasal sound, and that there are no double consonants but
those provided for the TL or DL, and TS, and combinations of the
hissing S, with a few consonants.
The fact is, that many of our combinations of consonants in the
English written language are artificial, and worse than worthless.
To indicate by a familiar illustration the syllabic character of
the alphabet of Se-quo-yah, I will take the name of William H.
Seward, which was appended to the Emancipation Proclamation of Mr.
Lincoln, printed in Cherokee. It was written thus: "O [wi] P[li] 4
[se] G [wa] 6 [te]," and might be anglicized Will Sewate. As has
been observed, there is no R in the Cherokee language, written or
spoken, and as for the middle initial of Mr. Seward's name, H.,
there being, of course, no initial in a syllabic alphabet, the
translator, who probably did not know what it stood for, was
compelled to omit it. It was in the year 1821 that the American
Cadmus completed his alphabet.
As will be observed by examining the alphabet, which is on the
table in the engraving, he used many of the letters of the English
alphabet, also numerals.
Pages:
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32