Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee

grahambargeron 136 points 87 comments June 10, 2026
www.smithsonianmag.com · View on Hacker News

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary#Unicode

Discussion Highlights (6 comments)

CPLX

In case anyone is curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary

torben-friis

>The syllabary was widely lauded, as its phonetic accuracy and simplicity made it far easier to grasp than English. I mean, that feels like it's bound to happen when an alphabet is built to represent current language or pronunciation. English is notoriously awful for not doing that.

rayiner

The article’s title is misleading: “The Man Who Created a Written Language for the Cherokee Did It So Efficiently and Elegantly, His Peers Thought It Was Magic.” His peers thought it was magic because they were unfamiliar with the concept of writing, not because his writing system was so efficient. He was put on trial for witchcraft because people thought he was communicating via magic. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/sequoyah-a... .

HoldOnAMinute

Now you have me wondering what is theoretically the most compact and efficient language, without using compression

steve-atx-7600

Not even an example of the glyphs??? Smithsonian must be another repository of clickbait like Forbes.

philipswood

An invented syllabary for English: https://www.omniglot.com/conscripts/engul.htm

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