Indians Had First “ITA”
S<‘<|iioy;i ;i ill i«'i nioiloru reading
mol hotl
того
Ilian a con I
игу
ago — and
it worked.
The new Initial Teaching Alphabet
already is causing a stir, and a lot more
is going to be heard about it in the
next few years. Already, critics are
giving it a hard time, but with few
concrete objections to it except that it
is different from the way they learned.
North Carolinians have a special,
if minor, interest in ITA because of a
bit of history. A Cherokee Indian,
George Giss (Sequoyah), did precisely
the same thing over 100 years ago,
and with amazing success. The record
his syllabary made in educating illiter¬
ates gives us confidence in the similar
ITA.
ITA. as most people now know, is
a revised and expanded alphabet,
which provides a letter or symbol for
all the vocal sounds used in speech.
As a result, no letter in this system
can represent two or more sounds, as
the present a docs, for instance, in
bad, father, raw, made. Proponents
of ITA contend that this multiplicity
of sounds makes the teaching of read¬
ing more difficult.
Sequoyah didn't know this, for he
could not read or write English. He
started from scratch, and evolved his
"alphabet" in a natural and unpreju¬
diced way. The copy we have shows
85 characters, each representing a dif¬
ferent sound, though wc have heard
the syllabary included 84 characters.
One may have been added later.
To devise this “alphabet." Sequoyah
took the letters he found in an English
book and arbitrarily assigned sounds
to them. He did not know what the
letters represented in English, and his
arc entirely different. His A , for exam¬
ple. is the sound for go.
Since there are only 24 letters in
the English alphabet, he soon ran out.
However, Sequoyah didn’t know that
H and h were the same letters, so he
used them both to represent different
sounds.
Then he turned some letters around
К у
BILL SHARPE
backwards, turned the 1. and J upside
down, utilized some badly written
script letters and numerals, and even
the ampersand to fill out his require¬
ments. A few of the characters seem
to have been inventions.
The hodge-podge looks strange, but
it was a marvelous piece of work. It
was so simple that a Cherokee could
learn to read and write in his own
language within a few days. The writ¬
ten language spread like wildfire
throughout the Cherokee nation. One
man would learn, and he would sit
by the side of the road and teach his
neighbor, and he in turn would teach
his entire family. It is said that within
a matter of months, the Cherokee sud¬
denly were transformed from an illiter¬
ate to a literate nation.
It was regarded as one of the sen¬
sational achievements in the history of
philology. Inside of a year or two,
almost every Cherokee in the nation
could read and write in his own lan¬
guage. whereas most of their white
neighbors were barely able to write
their own names in their language.
The syllabary was especially easy
(Continued on
раке
28)
CHEROKEE ALPHABET.
CHARACTERS
8У8ТЕМЛПГЛ1Л.Г
ARRANGED WITH THE BOUND*.
0
a
R
e
T
i
A
0
u
i
V
e
8»
©
kn
b
go
У
g'
A
go
J
В»
E
gv
ha
?
he
Л
hi
V
ho
Г
hu
Sj
hv
w
la
«Г
lc
P
li
G
lo
M
lu
•4
lv
r
ran
ot
me
II
mi
-b
mo
У
mu
e
na
t. hua
G nah
Л
ne
h
ni
Z
no
4
□u
0*
nv
I
qua
c0
que
TP
qui
A*
quo
сЭ
quu
8
quv
a
s U
sn
4
se
L
si
+
so
г
su
П
sv
ь
da
W
ta
S
deT
tc .1
di
Я
ti
V
to
s
du
J*
dv
Л
dla
C
tla
L
tic
C
tli
tin
qs
tlu
P
tl»
tsa
T
tse
Ip
Ui
К
tso
6
lau
C=
tsv
ft
-f
ss
we
«
wi
as
wo
8
wu
6
*»v
-*>
У»
*
ye
4»
У'
0
yo
«Г
yu
В
V»
BOUNDS KKIKKSENthl) UV VtlWEI.-.
A u a in father, or short as a in rivai
E as a in hate, or short as e in met.
I a9 i in pique, or short as i in pin.
О
as
о
in note, but as approaching to ait in lau.
U as oo in moon, or short as u in pull .
V as u in but. nasalized.
CONSONANT BOUNDS.
G is 9ouuded hard, approaching to
к
; sometimes before e, i, o. u and v, iu
iound is k. D has a sound between the English d and t; sometimes, before o,
•j aud v. its sound is l; when written before I and s the same analogy prevails.
All other letters as in English
Syllables beginning with g. except ga, have sometimes the power of k.
•vlluhies written with tl except tla. sometimes vary to d)
the state. October 15. 1965
11