Woleaian script

Infobox Writing system
name = Woleaian script
type = Syllabary
time = c. 1910 to c. 1950
languages = Woleaian
sample = Woleai script.gif

The Woleaian or Caroline Island script, thought to have been a syllabary, was a partially Latin-based script indigenous to Woleai Atoll and nearby islands of Micronesia and used to write the Woleaian language until the mid 20th century. At the time the script was first noticed by Europeans, Micronesia was known as the "Caroline Islands," and the it was called the "Caroline Island script".

The script has 99 known (C)V glyphs, which are not quite enough for a complete representation of the Woleaian language, even given the fact that consonant and vowel length are ignored. Approximately a fifth of them derive from the Latin alphabet. The question for historians is whether the Wolaians had proto-writing which crystalized into full-fledged writing under the influence of the Latin alphabet, or if they were exposed to the Latin alphabet without completely understanding it (see trans-cultural diffusion), and supplemented it either with existing signs from petroglyphs, tattoos, and the like, or by created new rebus or "ad hoc" symbols, until it was sufficient to fully express Woleaian.

The script was written from left to right. Since length was ignored, one glyph stood for both "ga" and "ka" (IPA| [xa] and IPA| [kːa), and another for both "la" and "na" (IPA| [la] , IPA| [na] , and IPA| [nːa] ). Some glyphs stood for longer syllables than just consonant-plus-vowel, such as "bag, warr, tüt, moi, shrö, chroa, gkaa," etc. Not enough glyphs were recorded to write all Woleaian syllables this way, and it is not known if the script was fully standardized. [It may have been expanded through the rebus principle when a writer found that convenient, or some of the extra syllables may have been logograms.]

History

In 1905 a lost missionary named Snelling and his Chuukese crew landed on Eauripik, a Woleaian-speaking atoll 100 km to the southwest of Woleai proper. There they taught the islanders the Latin orthography of Chuukese. The Woleaians, perhaps not given enough time to grasp the concept of an alphabet where each syllable is written as consonant plus vowel, understood each letter to represent its name, and thus interpreted the Latin alphabet as a defective syllabary that could only represent simple vowels and consonants plus the vowel IPA| [i] . (Reisenberg & Kaneshiro (1960) call the glyphs at this stage of development "Type 2". [These are listed in columns 116D and 116E of the Unicode proposal in the external links.] ) The glyphs were also mixed up somewhat: Although the letters resembling T, K, S, R, H, O, E, for example, stood for IPA| [ti, ki, si, ri, i, wo, ø] (there is no IPA| [h] sound in Woleaian), and W, И stood for IPA| [mi, ni] (that is, the letters M and N were inverted), letters resembling L, B, D stood for IPA| [fi, tʃi, pi] . (Note that these Latin letters are not necessary for Woleaian, since short IPA| [l] and long IPA| [nː] are not distinguished.)

Snelling died on Woleai on his way back to Chuuk. His crew continued, and at Faraulep the syllabary was augmented with glyphs that Reisenberg & Kaneshiro call "Type 1". At least some of these may have been rebuses. [According to an unreferenced site on the web that shows little understanding of the concepts involved, [http://www.proel.org/alfabetos/woleai.html] "pu" was a sketch of a fish, from the Woleaian word "pu" "fish"; likewise "shrü" "spine", "lö" "bottle", "ngä" "bamboo", "warr" "canoe". Of these, "ngä" seems to correspond to "ngae" IPA| [ŋe] in the Unicode proposal, "pu" to "bu" IPA| [ɸʷu] ~ [pːʷu] , and "lö" to "noe" IPA| [lø] ~ [nːø] , whereas no CCV or CVC syllables like "shrü" or "warr" are included.] This extended syllabary spread back to the other islands.

When the next missionary, John Macmillan Brown, reached Woleai in 1913, he found an indigenous writing system, albeit one known to only a few people. A chief named Egilimar showed it to him, and Brown published a list of 51 glyphs in 1914 that included V, CV, CVV, CCV, and CVC syllables. (Egilmar's list is shown in the infobox at the top of this page.)

yllabary

As of 2008, 97 characters had been proposed to Unicode, with space for 31 more. These constituted an incomplete set of the V and CV syllables of the script. No CCV or CVC syllables are included.

Notes

Further reading

Reisenberg, S.H., and S. Kaneshiro. 1960. "A Caroline Islands Script." Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 173, 269-333. Washington DC: The Smithsonian Institute.

ee also

* Rongorongo
* Caroline Islands

External links

*Michael Everson's [http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/woleai.pdf Unicode proposal] (PDF image; note that the odd "uu, oe, ae" spellings are equivalent to standard Woleaian orthographic "iu, eo, e".)
* [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/woleai.htm Omniglot] (An image of the syllabary with glyphs and names taken from the Unicode proposal.
* [http://camba.ucsd.edu/phonoloblog/index.php/2005/07/01/caroline-islands-script/ Phonoblog] (discussion of Reisenberg & Kaneshiro)