Re: Alleged Syllabaries from Alphabets (was: Neosyllabaries)

suzmccarth wrote:

> > 'You can't handle a paleface alphabet? OK, try a syllabary. That's
> > the Native American thing!'
>
> I am uncomfortable with that interpretation - did Evans think of it
> as a native American thing? Was he familiar with the Cherokee
> syllabary?

According to Konrad Tuchscherer, Cherokee was very well known and
probably served as a stimulus for the invention of Vai script in
Liberia, well before Evans did his.

> In the first half of the 19th century syllabic shorthand was well-
> known and some of the first Braille was syllabic but this was
> dropped.
>
> There was also a fascination with the scripts of India.

?

--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...