Tlingit alphabet facts for kids

The Tlingit language is spoken by the Tlingit people, who live in parts of Alaska and Canada. Over the past 200 years, people have tried many different ways to write down the Tlingit language. These different writing systems are called orthographies.

The first people to write Tlingit were Russian Orthodox ministers. They used the Cyrillic alphabet, which is the same alphabet used for Russian. After the United States bought Alaska, writing Tlingit stopped for a while. This was because a man named Sheldon Jackson believed that native languages should not be used. He thought everyone should speak English.

Later, in the 1890s, American and German anthropologists started writing down Tlingit words again. They used special linguistic transcriptions to record the sounds. In the 1960s, two linguists, Gillian Story and Constance Naish, created the first complete writing system for Tlingit. This system, with some changes, is the most common one used today.

In the 1980s, Jeff Leer and the Yukon Native Language Center made another writing system for Tlingit spoken inland. More recently, as e-mail became popular, a new way of writing Tlingit developed. It is based on the Naish-Story system but works better for typing on computers.

Cyrillic Writing for Tlingit

An early example of Tlingit written in the Cyrillic alphabet is a book from 1901. It was called Indication of the Pathway into the Kingdom of Heaven. A priest named John Veniaminov wrote it.

This old Cyrillic system did not have a perfect way to write every Tlingit sound. It also did not show the tone of words, which is important in Tlingit. However, a Tlingit speaker who knew Cyrillic could usually figure out the correct pronunciation.

Today, it would be easy to create a modern Cyrillic alphabet that could fully represent Tlingit sounds. This has been done at least once. But very few people know both Cyrillic and Tlingit. So, this type of writing is not widely used.

How Linguists Wrote Tlingit

When American anthropology became popular, many linguists started writing down Tlingit. Most of these systems followed the ideas of Franz Boas. Boas himself used one of these systems in his Tlingit grammar book from 1917.

Other common systems were used by John R. Swanton in his books about Tlingit myths and language. Frederica de Laguna also used her own system in her books about a Tlingit village.

A recent book by George T. Emmons called The Tlingit Indians uses De Laguna's writing system. Emmons himself did not use a regular system when he wrote Tlingit words. His notes were often hard to understand, even for linguists and Tlingit speakers today. De Laguna helped translate many of his notes into her system.

The Naish-Story Writing System

Constance Naish and Gillian Story created their writing system for their Bible translations. This was the first system that could accurately show all the different sounds in Tlingit. They also focused on helping native speakers learn to read and write their own language. Because of this, the Naish-Story system quickly became very popular.

Changes to the Naish-Story System

Naish and Story later made some changes to their system. They did this for their book called Tlingit Verb Dictionary, which came out in 1973.

The American Writing System

The "American" writing system is the most current version of the Naish-Story system. It is called "American" because it is used in Southeast Alaska. Over about 20 years, it was changed a few times.

This system still uses a special mark called an underscore diacritic for certain sounds. But it no longer uses a grave accent to show low tone. Instead, low tone is not marked at all. The American system uses single letters for short vowels and two letters together (like "aa") for long vowels.

The Canadian Writing System

The "Canadian" writing system was developed in the 1980s at the Yukon Native Language Center. It was designed to be similar to the writing systems used for other Athabaskan languages in the Yukon Territory and British Columbia.

The E-mail Writing System

The "e-mail" writing system developed naturally as more Tlingit people started using e-mail in the 1990s. It is a simpler version of the American system. It works well with basic computer text programs like ISO-8859-1.

This system uses the acute accent to show high tone. This accent is easy to type on most computers because it is used in many European languages. However, there is no underscore mark available for computers. So, the e-mail system uses two letters (like "gh") for certain sounds, similar to the Canadian system.

This e-mail system is easy to use on a computer. Even though it is not official, it is now used for Tlingit writing on signs, posters, and in newsletters. It is also the system used for Tlingit words in all Wikipedia articles.

Comparing Tlingit Writing Systems

The table below shows how the three main writing systems (e-mail, American, and Canadian) compare. It also shows their IPA equivalents. The IPA is a system used by linguists to write down sounds from any language.

Sometimes, younger speakers or people learning Tlingit as a second language say certain sounds differently. These differences are shown in parentheses in the IPA column. Also, some sounds are only used in certain areas or were more common in the past. For example, Canadian speakers often use an "m" sound where others use a "w" sound.

The three main writing systems can all be used to show these different sounds in Tlingit writing.