Cree Syllabics - Variants

Variants

The Evans syllabary continues in use for dialects of Cree west of the Manitoba-Ontario border as Western Cree syllabics. John Horden introduced modifications in the 1850s in the James Bay area. These were standardized in 1865 to form Eastern Cree syllabics, used today for many eastern dialects of Cree, Naskapi, and Ojibwe, though Cree dialects of eastern Quebec use the Latin alphabet. The two versions differ primarily in the way they indicate syllable-final consonants, in how they mark the semi-vowel /w/, and in how they reflect the phonological differences between Cree dialects. There are more minor local differences in orthography, shapes of the characters, writing styles, and punctuation, with some writers using dots or spaces between words, and others not indicating word separation.