Cree Syllabics (2002)

Tangential comment, but since this is Hacker News I just want to remind everybody of that legendary Reddit post that used Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics (which the Cree Syllabics are part of) to mock &quot;generic&quot; looking types in Go before they were allowed in the language.<p>Reddit: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;rust&#x2F;comments&#x2F;5penft&#x2F;parallelizing_enjarify_in_go_and_rust&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;rust&#x2F;comments&#x2F;5penft&#x2F;parallelizing_...</a><p>Internet Archive: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20230218214823&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;rust&#x2F;comments&#x2F;5penft&#x2F;parallelizing_enjarify_in_go_and_rust&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20230218214823&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddi...</a>

<i>As paper was scarce at the time, they wrote on birch bark with soot from burnt sticks, or carved messages in wood, and nicknamed James Evans &#x27;The man who made birch bark talk&#x27;.</i><p>There is also a Native-centric origin story in the piece, which is a nice touch.

Tangential comment, but considering there are many computer people here, I would highly recommend Jon Corbett&#x27;s talk at Causal Islands on Indigitalization: Indigenous Computing Theory, which features a Cree-language keyboard design of his own making!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;SWVLwxwcl1Q" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;SWVLwxwcl1Q</a>

It’s still used. Search for James Vukelich on TikTok or YouTube or Facebook. It appears in his Ojibwe vocabulary of the day.<p>Also examples on his Instagram feed: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.instagram.com&#x2F;jamesvukelich&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.instagram.com&#x2F;jamesvukelich&#x2F;</a>

An article in Cree posted here in the past:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=30807401">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=30807401</a><p>Submission link: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbc.ca&#x2F;news&#x2F;canada&#x2F;thunder-bay&#x2F;%E1%90%8A%E1%90%A3%E1%91%95%E1%94%9A%E1%90%A3%E1%90%A6%E1%90%83-%E1%90%81%E1%90%8F%E1%92%8B%E1%91%AD%E1%90%8D-%E1%90%85%E1%91%95%E1%90%B1%E1%93%87%E1%92%AA%E1%90%A3-%E1%93%82%E1%92%AA%E1%92%AA-%E1%90%85%E1%91%8E%E1%94%91%E1%91%AD%E1%94%91%E1%90%8D%E1%90%8F%E1%90%A3-%E1%92%B7%E1%94%A6-%E1%90%83%E1%90%A1%E1%91%BF%E1%93%AD%E1%90%A0-1.6385526" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbc.ca&#x2F;news&#x2F;canada&#x2F;thunder-bay&#x2F;%E1%90%8A%E1%90%A...</a>

&gt; Evans&#x27; syllabary for Ojibwe consisted of just nine symbols, each of which could be written in four different orientations to indicate different vowels.<p>I&#x27;ve always have trouble remembering .. Graphemes .. signs .. that only have orientation differences. For example Japanese maマ and muム . L&lt;ess than and &gt;grater than. I think this Cree script would be a challenge for some people. ᐆ ᐋ which way was o and which was a again. More recently I was trying memorize Korean script and come up with some visual mnemonics for the same things. ㅏㅓ which is &#x27;a&#x27; and which is &#x27;oe&#x27; ㅗㅜ which is &#x27;u&#x27; and which is &#x27;o&#x27;. I resorted to drawing the letters on top of an vowel articulation map of the mouth, and discovered that korean script was designed to correspond exactly to this.