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Cherokee syllabary (ᏣᎳᎩ / Tsalagi)   ᏣᎳᎩ (Tsalagi)

The Cherokee syllabary was invented by George Guess/Gist, a.k.a. Chief Sequoyah, of the Cherokee, and was developed between 1809 and 1824. At first Sequoyah experimented with a writing system based on logograms, but found this cumbersome and unsuitable for Cherokee. He later developed a syllabary which was originally cursive and hand-written, but it was too difficult and expensive to produce a printed version, so he devised a new version with symbols based on letters from the Latin alphabet and Western numerals.

Sequoyah's descendants claim that he was the last surviving member of his tribe's scribe clan and the Cherokee syllabary was invented by persons unknown at a much earlier date. No archaeological evidience has been found to verify this claim.

By 1820 thousands of Cherokees had learnt the syllabary, and by 1830, 90% were literate in their own language. Books, religious texts, almanacs and newspapers were all published using the syllabary, which was widely used for over 100 years.


Notable features

Printed Cherokee syllabary

Cherokee syllabary

Hand-written Cherokee syllabary

Original Cherokee syllabary


Cherokee pronunciation

Cherokee pronunciation


You can hear the sounds of Cherokee at:

Download a Cherokee script chart (Excel)

Cherokee numerals


Cherokee numerals


Sample text in Cherokee

Sample text in Cherokee




(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Information about Cherokee | Cherokee phrases | Cherokee numbers | Cherokee learning materials


Information about the Cherokee language and syllabary

Online Cherokee lessons

Online Cherokee dictionaries

Phrases in Cherokee

Numbers in Cherokee

Cherokee fonts

Cherokee transliteration system

Sequoyah Birthplace Museum

Echota Tsalagi Language Revitalization Project

Cherokee Observer - online Cherokee newspaper

Cherokee Publications - Native American books, tapes, etc.

Place names of Cherokee origin

Iroquoian languages

Cayuga, Cherokee, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Tuscarora, Wynadot


Bamum, Caroline Island Script, Celtiberian, Cherokee, Cypriot, Eskayan, Hiragana, Iberian, Katakana, Kpelle, Loma, Mende, Mwangwego, Ndjuká, Nüshu, Vai, Yi