--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Muke Tever" <muke@...> wrote:

> Nicholas Bodley <nbodley@...> wrote:

I'm far from qualified to comment on its accuracy and

> > quality.
> >
> > <http://www.answers.com/topic/canadian-aboriginal-syllabics>
>
> It's just a Wikipedia mirror. The original page is:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Aboriginal_Syllabics

It pretty much reflects what I know. Quite detailed. Under 'current
usgae' there is an description of what I am refering to.

"In the past, government policy towards syllabics has varied from
indifference to open hostility. Until quite recently, government
policy in Canada openly undermined native languages and church
organisations were often the only organised bodies using syllabics.
Later, as governments became more accommodating of native languages
and in some cases even encouraged their use, it was widely believed
that moving to a Roman alphabet writing scheme was better both for
linguistic reasons and to reduce the cost of supporting alternative
writing schemes."

There were 'linguistic reasons' for prefering an alphabet. An
alphabet was thought to be more phonemic? After all there was lots
of tech support for syllabics throughout its history.

Maybe it was because Bloomfield thought of writing as subordinate to
or a reflection of speech, not an independent system of its won.

For Bloomfield writing was 'merely a way of recording language by
means of visible marks' . I am sure that in the first half of this
century linguists believed that a phonemic orthography, and by that
they usually meant alphabetic, was best.

Suzanne