Glossary¶
- Cans
- The ISO 15924 code for Canadian Aboriginal syllabics.
- circumflex
- A circumflex is the little hat on top of a vowel (âêîô), sometimes used to represent long vowels in nêhiyawêwin.
- ISO 15924
The ISO 15924 standard defines four letter codes for every writing systems in common use.
See also: ISO 15924 on Wikipedia, List of ISO 15924 codes.
- Latn
- The ISO 15924 code for the Latin writing system, including Standard Roman Orthography.
- macron
- A macron is the little bar on top of a vowel (āēīō), sometimes used to represent long vowels in nêhiyawêwin.
- orthography
- Orthography is the set of rules for writing a certain language. Orthography is Greek for “correct writing”.
- Plains Cree
- Cree Y-dialect
- nêhiyawêwin
- Cree Y-dialect
- Plains Cree, Cree Y-Dialect, or nêhiyawêwin is the most widely-spoken western Cree dialect. Notably, many words which have a “th” in Woods Cree and words that have a “n” in Swampy Cree have a “y” in Plains Cree; this is why Plains Cree is also known as the Cree Y-dialect.
- sandhi
Changes to pronunciation across word and morpheme boundaries. In Cree, this may occur when two morphemes are joined such as pîhc- and -âyihk. Written in SRO, it’s pîhc-âyihk. Sandhi in Cree means that the “c” in the first morpheme and the “â” in the next morpheme should be joined and pronounced as one syllable. Hence, it is pronounced as *pîh-câ-yihk. The syllabics transliteration should be written as it is pronounced, thus pîhc-âyihk should be rendered as ᐲᐦᒑᔨᕽ and not as ᐲᐦᐨ-ᐋᔨᕽ.
For a more thorough description of sandhi in Cree, see [Wolfart] and [Wolvengrey].
- SRO
- Standard Roman Orthography
Standard Roman Orthography or SRO is a writing system for nêhiyawêwin that uses the Latin alphabet—the same alphabet as English and French. Initial attempts to write nêhiyawêwin in the Latin alphabet resulted in several different spellings, and several different ways to write the same thing [Okimāsis]. SRO is a unified way to write nêhiyawêwin in Latin script. Even though SRO attempts to be consistent, there are still variations, such as the use of circumflexes (âêîô) or macrons (āēīō).
See also, Beginning to read Plains Cree in Standard Roman Orthography.
- syllabics
- Canadian Aboriginal syllabics
- Syllabics is a writing system for nêhiyawêwin (in syllabics, ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ) that uses symbols to represent full syllables. Cree syllabics form a part of the Canadian Aboriginal syllabics writing system family.
- transliterator
- transcriptor
- converter
- transcriptor
- A transliterator is a tool that converts between two different writing systems. Synonyms for “transliterator” include converter and transcriptor.
- Woods Cree
- Cree Th-dialect
- nīhithawīwin
- Cree Th-dialect
- Woods Cree, Cree Th-Dialect, or nīhithawīwin is a Cree dialect spoken in Northern Saskatchewan and Northern Manitoba. It is distinct from Plains Cree in that many words that have a “th” in them are spoken with a “y” in Plains Cree; this is why Woods Cree is also known as Cree Th-dialect.
| [Okimāsis] | Okimāsis, Jean and Wolvengrey, Arok. How to spell it in Cree: the standard Roman orthography. Houghton Boston, 2008. |
| [Wolvengrey] | Wolvengrey, Arok, ed. ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ: ᐃᑗᐏᓇ / nēhiýawēwin: itwēwina/Cree: Words. Canadian Plains Research Center, October 2001. pp. xvi–xviii. |
| [Wolfart] | Wolfart, H. Christoph. Sketch of Cree, an Algonquian Language. In Goddard, Ives (ed.), Handbook of American Indians. Washington: Smithsonian Institute, 1996. Volume 17: Languages, pp. 390-439. |