Syllabary

A writing system whose basic characters represent syllables, rather than individual speech sounds or whole words.

Syllable: A unit of spoken language organized around a vowel sound, often with surrounding consonants. Syllabary characters encode these units as writing.
Open syllable: A syllable that ends in a vowel rather than a consonant. Scripts such as Japanese kana represent open syllables especially directly.
Linear B: A syllabic script used to write Mycenaean Greek in the second millennium BCE. Its signs encode syllables alongside a smaller set of ideograms.
Alphabet: A writing system whose letters generally represent consonant and vowel phonemes. Alphabets encode smaller sound units than syllabaries.
Sequoyah: A Cherokee silversmith who created the Cherokee syllabary in the early nineteenth century. His invention became a widely adopted writing system without alphabetic training.
Mora: A unit of phonological timing that can determine a language's rhythm and word structure. Some writing systems encode morae rather than whole syllables.
Closed syllable: A syllable that ends in a consonant. Consonant-final syllables can require extra signs or spelling conventions.
Cherokee syllabary: A writing system developed by Sequoyah for writing the Cherokee language. It is a prominent Indigenous syllabary designed for a specific language.
Abjad: A writing system that primarily represents consonants, often leaving vowels unmarked. Abjads omit many vowel distinctions that syllabaries encode explicitly.
Michael Ventris: An English architect and codebreaker who deciphered Linear B as an early form of Greek. His decipherment established what language the ancient syllabary recorded.

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