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by __s 1541 days ago
An aunt who teaches Ojibwe was showing me how the alphabet uses symmetries for its phoenetics https://www.kercstore.com/product-page/ojibwe-syllabic-chart...
3 comments

That's so beautiful. I especially love how syllables are encoded as single symbols. Phonetic writing systems are amazing and this one is especially neat.

But... as a parent of a kid with dyslexia... I can't imagine teaching him this alphabet: he'd be shooting in the dark on vowel choices. After many months of deliberate effort, he can distinguish d/b from p/q but within those groups, he's completely lost. Sometimes, I've learned, beauty of symmetry comes at a cost.

One symbol im the title stands out: ᐦ appears to be missing from that chart -- any chance you know what's going on there?

Looked up: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe_writing_systems#Ojibw...

> A glottal stop or /h/ preceding a vowel is optionally written with a separate character ⟨ᐦ⟩, as in ᐱᒪᑕᐦᐁ pimaatahe 'is skating'

I'm interested in learning Ojibwe and I've been planning to look into a tutor soon. If you don't mind me asking, how does your aunt teach? Does she work online or locally? Is she teaching only as a volunteer or professionally?
Awesome, thanks for sharing.
Why does the U not follow the other rules?
They messed up the chart, your intuition was right:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Aboriginal_syllabics#...