ᑌᓀ ᒐ (DENE THA / SOUTH SLAVEY) SYLLABARIUM

Below is the complete South Slavey Syllabarium, using only characters defined by Unicode. Unicode places all finals at the top-line, where Dene requires some finals to be top-line, some mid-line, and some baseline. The location of the final is vital to correct pronunciation. Please note that your browser may not be able to accomodate the mid-line and baseline finals.

Several of the English-tradition /u/ vowel syllabics are not included as distinct characters in Unicode, therefore I have used the non-spacing dot accent to attempt to put the dot above the syllabic. Note that depending on the font you are using, the dot may instead be somewhere in the middle of the syllabic instead of on-top.

The 1900 Dene Tha syllabary did not differentiate all of the distinct sounds (phonemes) of the language, e.g. the symbol ᕮ could be /ttha/ or /tth’a/. In general, this likely causes little difficulty for fluent speakers who can infer the correct phoneme from context. The Practical Syllabics system represents a more accurate rendering of Dene Tha sounds.

The “initials” in (brackets) were not included in the 1900 chart, either because several phonemes use the same syllabic, or because the sound is written with two symbols (digraph). Digraphs are written with a raised “final” (the text calls finals “smaller characters”) plus a syllabic. I've deduced the sounds of the digraphs by comparing the syllabic text with a Roman equivilent from a parallel text, as well as looking at syllabic texts in other Dene languages.

There are several rows which one cannot be 100% sure about their correct sound. ᖉ is given as 〈kl〉, as there is also a digraph ᒡᕍ which I assume is /tla/, 〈kl〉 is likely the /tla/ and /tl'a/. The Roman text gives ᐨᒐ as 〈da〉, but this is unlikely, because ᐨ is always gives a 〈d〉 onset to the following syllabic (ᐨᗴ, ᐨᘔ, ᐨᕍ), so I presume ᐨᒐ to be /ddha/ by analogy. There is also the rare appearance of the digraph ᒡᕦ, which could be either /t'/ or /t/.

There is an ambiguity with the final ᐦ, which serves double duty as 〈h〉 and as part of the digraph ᑲᐦ 〈kha〉 (/xa/). Actually, ᑲᐦ could also be 〈kah〉. The acute accent marks the postposition “with”. This is more fully described under note 8 on the Chipewyan page.

Front vowels (e.g. i, e) without an initial consonant can be written with either the plain vowel ᐃ, ᐁ or with a y-series syllabic ᔨ, ᔦ.

Tone and nasal vowels are not written, neither is /h/ at the end of a syllable consistantly employed. The 1900 text uses the Roman period 〈.〉 instead of the syllabic version ᙮