Sequoyah | EPFL Graph Search

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Sequoyah (Cherokee: ᏍᏏᏉᏯ, Ssiquoya, or ᏎᏉᏯ, Se-quo-ya; 1770 – August 1843), also known as George Gist or George Guess, was a Native American polymath and neographer of the Cherokee Nation. In 1821, he completed his independent creation of the Cherokee syllabary, making reading and writing in Cherokee possible. His achievement was one of the few times in recorded history that an individual who was a member of a pre-literate group created an original, effective writing system. His creation of the syllabary allowed the Cherokee nation to be one of the first North American Indigenous groups to have a written language. Sequoyah was also an important representative for the Cherokee nation, by going to Washington, D.C. to sign two relocations and trading of land treaties. After seeing its worth, the people of the Cherokee Nation rapidly began to use his syllabary and officially adopted it in 1825. It unified a forcibly divided nation with new ways of communication and a sense of independence. By the 1850s, their literacy rate reached almost 100%, surpassing that of surrounding European-American settlers. The Cherokee syllabary has had international influence. As diffusion spread, it is believed to have inspired the development of 21 known scripts or writing systems, used in a total of 65 languages in North America, Africa, and Asia. Sequoyah's important status has led to several competing accounts of his life that are speculative, contradictory, or fabricated. As noted by John B. Davis, there were few primary documents describing facts of Sequoyah's life. Some anecdotes were passed down orally, but these often conflict or are vague about specific times and places. Sequoyah was born in the Cherokee town of Tuskegee, Tennessee, around 1778. James Mooney, a prominent anthropologist and historian of the Cherokee people, quoted a cousin as saying that as a little boy, Sequoyah spent his early years with his mother. In the people's matrilineal kinship system, children were considered born into their mother's family and clan, and her male relatives were most important to their upbringing.

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Writing Systems

Explores the evolution of writing systems, the impact of new technologies, and the existence of various scripts.

A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form of information storage and transfer. Writing systems require shared understanding between writers and readers of the meaning behind the sets of characters that make up a script.

The history of writing traces the development of expressing language by systems of markings and how these markings were used for various purposes in different societies, thereby transforming social organization. Writing systems are the foundation of literacy and literacy learning, with all the social and psychological consequences associated with literacy activities. In the history of how writing systems have evolved in human civilizations, more complete writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic or early mnemonic symbols (symbols or letters that make remembering them easier).