A syllabary is a phonetic writing system consisting of symbols representing syllables. A syllable is often made up of a consonant plus a vowel or a single vowel.
The illustration on the right shows a selection of symbols from the Cherokee (on the left) and Japanese Hiragana (on the right) syllabaries
It could be argued that the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics used to write Cree, and other languages, are a abugida or syllabic alphabet, however they are classified as a 'featural syllabary' by Unicode.
 Cherokee (Tsalagi) |
 Cree syllabics |
 Hiragana (Japanese) |
 Katakana (Japanese) |
 Yi (Nosu) |
 Vai |
 Bamum |
 Dunging (Iban) |
 Afaka |
 Caroline Island Script |
 Celtiberian |
 Cypriot |
 Eskayan |
 Iberian |
 Kpelle |
 Loma |
 Mende (Kikakui) |
 Nüshu |
 Nwagụ Aneke |
 Yugtun |
transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are used extensively throughout this website. The IPA transcriptions are the letters and other symbols which appear in square bracketts, like this [b], [p]. etc.
You can learn about the IPA and phonetics at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet
http://www.nativlang.com/linguistics/ipa-pronunciation-lessons.php
http://cmed.faculty.ku.edu/acdapres/rabeipa/index.html
https://linguischtick.wordpress.com/ipa/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBo5LAVYtX4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2frVKeVTKU
Writing systems: Abjads | Alphabets | Abugidas | Syllabaries | Semanto-phonetic scripts | Undeciphered scripts | Alternative scripts | Constructed scripts | Fictional scripts | Magical scripts | Index (A-Z) | Index (by direction) | Index (by language) | Index (by continent) | What is writing? | Types of writing system | Differences between writing and speech | Language and Writing Statistics | Languages
Page last modified: 04.07.25
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