Proposal for encoding the Cherokee script

ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N1172
Date: 1995-03-14
This is an unofficial HTML version of a document submitted to WG2.

Title: Proposal for encoding the Cherokee script

Source: Michael Everson
Status: Expert contribution
Action: For consideration by WG2

This is a Proposal and Proposal Summary (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 form N1116F) for encoding the Cherokee script in ISO/IEC 10646.

A. Administrative
1. Requester's name:
Michael Everson.

2. Requester type:
Expert contribution

3. Submission date:
1995-03-14

4. Requester's reference:

5. Type of proposal:
This is a complete proposal.

The following two items are to be completed by WG2:
a. Relevant SC2/WG2 document numbers:

b. Status (list of meeting number and corresponding action or disposition):

B. Technical (General)
1. Nature of proposal:
This proposal is for a new script.

Proposed name of the script:
Cherokee.

2. Number of characters in proposal:
86 characters.

3. Proposed category per SC2/WG2 N1116:
Category B.

4. Proposed Level of Implementation:
Level 1.

Is a rationale provided for the choice?
There are no combining characters in Cherokee.

5. Is a repertoire including character names provided?:
Yes, see below.

a. If YES, are the names in accordance with the 'character naming guidelines' in Annex K of ISO/IEC 10646-1?
Yes.

b. Are the character shapes legible?
Yes, see the repertoires below.

6. Who will provide the appropriate computerized font for publishing the standard?
Michael Everson.

If available now, identify source(s) for the font:
Michael Everson.

7. References:
a. Are references (to other character sets, dictionaries, descriptive texts etc.) provided:
Yes, see below.

b Are published examples (such as samples from newspapers, magazines, or other sources) of use of proposed characters attached?
Yes, see Exhibits attached.

C. Technical (Justification)
1. Information on the user community for the proposed characters (for example: size, demographics, information technology use, or publishing use) is included.
There are three tribes of Cherokees recognized by the U.S. government: the United Keetoowah Band (UKB) of Cherokee Indians (about 7000 members), the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (CNO) (140,000 members), and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina (3000+ members). The Cherokee script is widely used in information processing in the Cherokee Nation; use of the script is widespread among the members of the United Keetoowah Band, who, apparently, preserve a higher proportion of Cherokee speakers than the other groups. Several 8-bit vendor-specific code tables are in use, some of which have a higher status than others.

2. The context of use for the proposed characters (type of use; common or rare) is included.
The Cherokee Syllabary is the usual script used to write the Cherokee language. Though several fonts are available commercially and for free on the Internet many are ad-hoc ASCII-cypher solutions and there seems to be little standardization. The Cherokee Nation uses code tables developed by Al Webster for work on the Apple Macintosh platform which he is sending to me; though I have not yet seen it, it is unlikely that its platform-specific encoding would affect the proposal here. Certainly the repertoire will not be affected.

3. Are the proposed characters in current use by the user community?
Yes.

4. After giving due considerations to the principles in N1116 must the proposed characters be entirely in the BMP?
Yes. Document N947 allocates space for Cherokee. The set of characters is well-defined and there should be no difficulty encoding them in 10646.

5. Should the proposed characters be kept together in a contiguous range (rather than being scattered)?
Cherokee should have 6 columns reserved for it as reflected in the repertoire sample given below. A suggested range would be 1500-155F.

6. Can any of the proposed characters be considered a presentation form of an existing character?
No.

If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
No.

7. Can any of the proposed character(s) be considered to be similar (in appearance or function) to an existing character?
Yes, there is superficial resemblance of some Cherokee characters to characters belonging to the Latin scipt (D R T, A J E, M, H, G Z, V S, L C P, K, B) but their use (a e i, go gu gv, lu, mi, nah no, do du, tle tli tlv, tso, yv ) makes it clear that they are not Latin characters and that unification with Latin characters would be wrong.

If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
Yes; the Cherokee characters are unique.

8. Does the proposal include use of composite sequences?
No.

If YES, is a rationale provided?
No.

Is a list of composite sequences and their corresponding glyph images (graphic symbols provided?
No.

1.0 Proposal for encoding of the Cherokee script

1.1 The Cherokee script is a syllabic script devised in the 19th century by Sequoyah (who signed his name

Ssiquoya). Sequoyah was impressed by the utility of writing, and set out to analyze the sounds of his language and to devise a writing system for it. Detailed information on Sequoyah's development of the script can be found in the references given below; some small part of that may be found in the Exhibit 1 appended to this proposal.

1.2 Structure of the script.

The Cherokee script is a syllabary. Unlike Ethiopic and some other syllabaries, the glyphs assigned to each syllable are unrelated to one another. It is said that Sequoyah derived the idea of writing from seeing books in English; some of the glyphs are similar to Latin characters, but they are clearly not derived from a use of the knowledge of their Latin values.

1.3 Rendering.

Cherokee is a simple left-to-right script requiring no combining characters. It is a caseless script; when for various purposes initial characters are made larger it is for typographic effect, not for casing as in Latin, Greek, or Cyrillic. Several keyboarding conventions exist for inputting Cherokee, some involving dead-key input from Latin transiterations, some based on sound-mnemonics related to the Latin letters on keyboards, and some ergonomic systems based on frequency of the syllables in the Cherokee language.

2.0 References

Diringer, David. 1948. The alphabet: a key to the history of mankind. New York: The Philosophical Library.
Faulmann, Carl. 1990. Das Buch der Schrift . Repr. of 1880 ed. Frankfurt: Eichborn.
Foreman, Grant. 1959. Sequoyah. 2nd ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Foster, George E. 1855. Se-quo-yah, the American Cadmus and modern Moses . Philadelphia: Office of the Indian Rights Association. Repr. 1979 by AMS.
Haarmann, Harald. 1990. Universalgeschichte der Schrift. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag. (p. 258-61)
Holmes, Ruth Bradley, and Betty Sharp Smith. 1976. Beginning Cherokee: (= Talisgo galiquogi dideliquasdodi Tsalagi digoweli ). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Kilpatrick, Jack Frederick, and Anna Gritts Kilpatrick, eds. [s.d.] New Echota Letters: contributions of Samuel A. Worcester to the Cherokee Phoenix. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press.

3.0 CHEROKEE CHARACTER NAMES


xx00    (This position shall not be used)

xx01    CHEROKEE LETTER A

xx02    CHEROKEE LETTER E

xx03    CHEROKEE LETTER I

xx04    CHEROKEE LETTER O

xx05    CHEROKEE LETTER U

xx06    CHEROKEE LETTER V

xx07    CHEROKEE LETTER GA

xx08    CHEROKEE LETTER KA

xx09    CHEROKEE LETTER GE

xx0A    CHEROKEE LETTER GI

xx0B    CHEROKEE LETTER GO

xx0C    CHEROKEE LETTER GU

xx0D    CHEROKEE LETTER GV

xx0E    CHEROKEE LETTER HA

xx0F    CHEROKEE LETTER HE

xx10    CHEROKEE LETTER HI

xx11    CHEROKEE LETTER HO

xx12    CHEROKEE LETTER HU

xx13    CHEROKEE LETTER HV

xx14    CHEROKEE LETTER LA

xx15    CHEROKEE LETTER LE

xx16    CHEROKEE LETTER LI

xx17    CHEROKEE LETTER LO

xx18    CHEROKEE LETTER LU

xx19    CHEROKEE LETTER LV

xx1A    CHEROKEE LETTER MA

xx1B    CHEROKEE LETTER ME

xx1C    CHEROKEE LETTER MI

xx1D    CHEROKEE LETTER MO

xx1E    CHEROKEE LETTER MU

xx1F    CHEROKEE LETTER NA

xx20    CHEROKEE LETTER HNA

xx21    CHEROKEE LETTER NAH

xx22    CHEROKEE LETTER NE

xx23    CHEROKEE LETTER NI

xx24    CHEROKEE LETTER NO

xx25    CHEROKEE LETTER NU

xx26    CHEROKEE LETTER NV

xx27    CHEROKEE LETTER QUA

xx28    CHEROKEE LETTER QUE

xx29    CHEROKEE LETTER QUI

xx2A    CHEROKEE LETTER QUO

xx2B    CHEROKEE LETTER QUU

xx2C    CHEROKEE LETTER QUV

xx2D    CHEROKEE LETTER SA

xx2E    CHEROKEE LETTER S

xx2F    CHEROKEE LETTER SE

xx30    CHEROKEE LETTER SI

xx31    CHEROKEE LETTER SO

xx32    CHEROKEE LETTER SU

xx33    CHEROKEE LETTER SV

xx34    CHEROKEE LETTER DA

xx35    CHEROKEE LETTER TA

xx36    CHEROKEE LETTER DE

xx37    CHEROKEE LETTER TE

xx38    CHEROKEE LETTER DI

xx39    CHEROKEE LETTER TI

xx3A    CHEROKEE LETTER DO

xx3B    CHEROKEE LETTER DU

xx3C    CHEROKEE LETTER DV

xx3D    CHEROKEE LETTER DLA

xx3E    CHEROKEE LETTER TLA

xx3F    CHEROKEE LETTER TLE

xx40    CHEROKEE LETTER TLI

xx41    CHEROKEE LETTER TLO

xx42    CHEROKEE LETTER TLU

xx43    CHEROKEE LETTER TLV

xx44    CHEROKEE LETTER TSA

xx45    CHEROKEE LETTER TSE

xx46    CHEROKEE LETTER TSI

xx47    CHEROKEE LETTER TSO

xx48    CHEROKEE LETTER TSU

xx49    CHEROKEE LETTER TSV

xx4A    CHEROKEE LETTER WA

xx4B    CHEROKEE LETTER WE

xx4C    CHEROKEE LETTER WI

xx4D    CHEROKEE LETTER WO

xx4E    CHEROKEE LETTER WU

xx4F    CHEROKEE LETTER WV

xx50    CHEROKEE LETTER YA

xx51    CHEROKEE LETTER YE

xx52    CHEROKEE LETTER YI

xx53    CHEROKEE LETTER YO

xx54    CHEROKEE LETTER YU

xx55    CHEROKEE LETTER YV

xx56    CHEROKEE LETTER ARCHAIC HV

xx57    (This position shall not be used)

xx58    (This position shall not be used)

xx59    (This position shall not be used)

xx5A    (This position shall not be used)

xx5B    (This position shall not be used)

xx5C    (This position shall not be used)

xx5D    (This position shall not be used)

xx5E    (This position shall not be used)

xx5F    (This position shall not be used)

Cherokee Table

4.0 Some notes on the history of this proposal

On 2 July 1992 I sent a message to the ISO10646@JHUVM list asking whether anyone had taken an interest in encoding Cherokee in the standard. I referred to several sources which I had at the time for the syllabary (listed in the references in 3.0). I noted that the Diringer and Haarmann had the usual alphabetical order of the syllables wrong, and gave a list which followed that given in Holmes & Smith, which forms the basis for this proposal.

4.1 Contemporary sorting order.

Lloyd Anderson got in touch with me a few days later, and in response to some of the questions he raised, as to why I suggested that some of the orderings were "wrong". At some stage I had forwarded these same comments to Rick McGowan of the Unicode Consortium, and as far as I know these were used in the draft proposal for Cherokee in the Unicode Technical Report #3; certainly the tables looked a lot like the ASCII tables I sent.

Lloyd said: "As someone with interests both in scripts (as a linguist) and in computing, I might have thought that you would want a regular arrangement of 8 code points per consonant (so far as that is possible), keeping the relative positions of the regular 6 vowels constant within each set of 8."

I said: "Following is some information to answer some of your questions about Cherokee coding. So far as I know, there is no coded standard for Cherokee; there is however an accepted alphabetical order, given in Holmes and Smith, which was not followed by Haarmann or Diringer. I like your idea of a regular arrangement of code per consonant, but the Cherokee syllabary is a finite set and I assumed that a strict run from D a to B yv would make, for instance, sorting more straightforward than the aesthetic symmetry of relative positions, which would leave blanks in the set.

"First, the "wrong orderings" given in the writing-system books. Haarmann (1990:260) gives (in German) a chart (see Exhibit 2 appended to this document) of the syllabary; Haarmann wrote underlined a for traditional transliteration v , which I use here. Clearly, Haarmann is keeping the relative positions of the regular six vowels constant within each set of eight for the sake of his chart.

Diringer (1948:175) gives the following chart, in which he is apparently changing the order from six ranges across to five in order to fit the syllabary conveniently on the page. Note too he uses O WITH DIAERESIS for the usual -v, as well as dz for ts.

Holmes and Smith (1976), in their teaching grammar, give a chart (see the charts on page 3 of this document and Exhibit 5) which is apparently the traditionally-accepted and expected order.

4.2 Original sorting order.

The fullest story on the history of Cherokee sorting order is given in Kilpatrick and Kilpatrick, who reprint an article by Worcester in the first issue of the Cherokee Phoenix ( (Tsalagi Tsulehisanvhi)) , 21 February 1828. See Exhibit 3 appended to this document.

Sequoyah's own original sorting order is given in his handwriting in Foster 1885 (see Exhibit 4 appended to this document). The 27th character in the series is the character CHEROKEE LETTER ARCHAIC HV which was not implemented in the nineteenth century or since, and which does not appear in the painting of Sequoyah reproduced in Haarmann 1990. Compare the facsimile in Exhibit 4 with the charts here:

Worcester's "proposed systematic arrangement", with slight modifications, is the one found in Foreman 1959 (Exhibit 1), Holmes and Smith 1976 (Exhibit 5), and on page 3 of this document. It was accepted as the standard order and is used today as given in Holmes and Smith. In this proposal I have reserved a place for the never-used 86th letter CHEROKEE LETTER ARCHAIC HV, and I have modified the fonts used here it create a printed form of this character following the facsimile given in Foster 1885. It may not be necessary to encode this character, but it is given as the final one in the sequence, though this might be rather pointless if the character was never used.

4.3 Numbers.

Sequoyah also invented a system for representing numbers, which was abandoned quite early in favour of Arabic. A copy of it is given in Sequoyah's handwriting in Holmes and Smith. I don't think it was ever set into type. They say: "Sequoyah then spent much time thinking into and creating a system of numbers on the decimal system which he laid before the tribal council. They sensibly voted Sequoyah's numbers out, as Arabic numerals, which are simpler, were already in use."

5.0 This proposal to WG2.

In July 1994 Joe LoCicero initiated a discussion list TSALAGI@JOYCE.ENG.YALE.EDU for Cherokee encoding questions. Discussion was intense, interesting, and stimulating, but nothing much has been heard from that list for some time. Recently I spoke with Dr Gloria Sly, deputy director of the Education Department at Cherokee Nation about encoding Cherokee; we agreed that I would submit this proposal to WG2 and copy it to her for local evaluation. She agreed that the sorting order given here was the same one which she is using, and that if the 86th character were to be encoded it should come at the end of the series. This proposal is submitted on behalf of the Cherokee Nation with Gloria's permission. I will liaise with the Cherokee between the Geneva meeting in April 1995 and the Helsinki meeting in June 1995. If, as I believe, there is nothing controversial in this encoding proposal, it should be possible for WG2 to vote on the Cherokee script at the meeting in Helsinki.

5.1 Outstanding issues to be resolved:

Input from the Cherokee Nation is requested on the following two points:

1. Is the ordering here, based on Worcester's syllabic arrangement, acceptable for encoding Cherokee? If not, shall Sequoyah's original arrangement be employed, or some other arrangement?

2. Shall the character CHEROKEE LETTER ARCHAIC HV be encoded as the final character here, or shall it be left unencoded in ISO 10646?

6.0 Exhibits.

Exhibit 1.

Foreman 1959. Sketch of Sequoyah's life and of the invention of the syllabary. Facsimile of , the Cherokee Phoenix , 1828. Facsimile of the script, with Sequoyah's arrangement and Worcester's systematic syllabic arrangement.

Exhibit 2.

Haarmann 1900. Discussion of the development of the script. Phonetic chart in non-standard order. Reproduction of painting of Sequoyah with detail of the Syllabary in his ordering.

Exhibit 3.

Kilpatrick and Kilpatrick [s.d.]. Reprints Worcester's article in , the Cherokee Phoenix , 1828-02-21, about the syllabary for which he designed printed type.

Exhibit 4.

Foster 1885. Reproduction of a text in Cherokee with typographical capitals. Facsimile of Sequoyah's original design for the characters and their original sorting order.

Exhibit 5.

Holmes and Smith 1976. The syllabary as ordered today. Notes on Sequoyah's life. Chart of the number system and facsimile of the syllabary, with Sequoyah's signature.

Exhibit 6.

Faulmann 1880. The syllabary in non-standard ordering.

Michael Everson, Evertype, Dublin, 2001-09-21