Samuel Pollard: Script for Transcribing the Language of the A-Hmao

Two Related Indigenous Writing Systems: Canada’s Syllabic and China’s A-Hmao Scripts. Abstract/Resume. “Around 1840, a team of Ojibwa and Cree speakers working with Rev. James Evans, a British Wesleyan missionary, developed a syllabic writing system which disseminated rapidly among the Cree and other northern Canadian Aboriginal nations. Some 65 years later, in 1904, another Methodist, Rev. Samuel Pollard, who also worked in close collaboration with local people, supervised the elaboration of a script for transcribing the language of the A-hmao, an Aboriginal minority in south-western China. This article tells the story of these two writing systems, discusses the evidence of a connection between them, and describes their similar educational role in terms of social empowerment.”

Two Related Indigenous Writing Systems: Canada’s Syllabic and China’s A-Hmao Scripts

R. Alison Lewis | University of Lincoln | Lincoln LN6 7TS | United Kingdom | Louis-Jacques Dorais | Departement d’anthropologie | Universite Laval | Quebec, Quebec | Canada, G1K 7P4 | Abstract/Resume | Iportal.Usask.Ca

Around 1840, a team of Ojibwa and Cree speakers working with Rev. James Evans, a British Wesleyan missionary, developed a syllabic writing system which disseminated rapidly among the Cree and other northern Canadian Aboriginal nations. Some 65 years later, in 1904, another Methodist, Rev. Samuel Pollard, who also worked in close collaboration with local people, supervised the elaboration of a script for transcribing the language of the A-hmao, an Aboriginal minority in south-western China. This article tells the story of these two writing systems, discusses the evidence of a connection between them, and describes their similar educational role in terms of social empowerment.