Syllabaries

A syllabary is a writing system in which each symbol represents a syllable, typically a consonant-vowel combination or a vowel on its own. Unlike alphabets, where each symbol usually stands for a single phoneme, a syllabary assigns one sign to a syllable unit. The exact structure varies by language, and some systems use diacritics or extended signs to cover additional syllables.

Syllabaries are commonly used for languages with relatively limited syllable inventories. They can require hundreds of signs to cover all possible syllables, though some languages reuse signs with diacritics or combinations. Distinctions are sometimes drawn between true syllabaries and abugidas, where signs denote a consonant with an inherent vowel modified by diacritics; prac- tically, many scholars classify systems such as Cherokee or Japanese kana as syllabaries, while others treat abugidas as a related but distinct family.

Notable examples include the Japanese kana systems—hiragana and katakana—which together cover the syllables of Japanese. The Cherokee syllabary, created in the 19th century by Sequoyah, represents Cherokee syllables with a unique set of characters. The Canadian Aboriginal syllabics (used for Cree, Inuktitut, and related languages) form another prominent family. Historical syllabaries include Linear B, which was used for Mycenaean Greek. Hangul, used for Korean, is sometimes described as an alphabetic system with syllabic blocks rather than a true syllabary, since it arranges letters into syllable-sized units rather than assigning one symbol per syllable.

Today, syllabaries remain in active use in several languages, with Unicode encoding supporting digital text and ongoing linguistic study and literacy efforts.