Writing Systems
The Henry Orthography
The Henry orthography was created by the late Reg Henry. Reg was a fluent speaker of Cayuga, Onondaga, and English (among other languages), and was also a gifted linguist.
The Henry orthography is widely used by Cayuga speakers at Six Nations. There is also a linguistic writing system, which is used in academic circles.
The following example shows the main differences between the Henry and linguistic writing systems.
The Henry and linguistic orthographies compared
|
Henry |
Linguistic |
|
t |
th |
|
d |
t |
|
k |
kh |
|
g |
k |
|
s |
sh |
|
ts |
tsh |
|
j |
ts, tsy |
At the end of words, both writing systems use < t > or < k >, but not < th > or < kh >.
If you’re familiar with other writing systems, you’ll notice that the linguistic orthography has a lot in common with the Mohawk and Oneida writing systems, as shown below.
Comparison of writing systems
|
Henry |
Linguistic |
Mohawk |
|
|
to: |
tho: |
eˀ tho |
that, there |
|
do: |
to: |
to |
how |
Some background notes about this manual
Sometimes, it is necessary to make a distinction between letters (or written symbols) and how they are pronounced. For this reason, letters in the Henry orthography will be written between angle brackets; for example, < d > means ‘the written letter D in the Henry orthography’. In contrast, to describe the exact pronunciation of a letter, symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) will used; the letters from the IPA will be written between square brackets; for example, [ ɑ ] stands for ‘the vowel sound in lawn’.
If you want to learn more about the IPA, you can go to the following website, which has interactive charts: http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/charts.html. Or you can go to the website of the International Phonetic Association, which also has interactive charts and sound files illustrating what the letters of the IPA sound like: http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipa.html.
