Cherokee Small Letter De

It represents one spoken Cherokee syllable, transliterated as “de.”

Cherokee writing is a syllabary: each sign represents a spoken syllable. The Latin letters de are a pronunciation guide for ꮥ, not the meaning of a Cherokee word and not the Latin letter D.

Sequoyah developed the Cherokee syllabary between 1815 and 1821 so Cherokee could be written. The Cherokee Nation adopted it in 1825. Samuel Worcester adapted the signs for print, and the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper used them in 1828. Histories connect Cherokee writing's success with the development of Cree syllabics in the 1840s; that is an influence between writing systems, not evidence that this particular Cherokee sign shares ancestry with a Cree character.

Why does ꮥ have a lowercase form?

It is a typographic case form, not a new syllable.

Earlier Cherokee print commonly used signs at capital height. A lowercase set lets Cherokee writing fit the smaller body letters used in cased text. The syllabic reading stays the same across the case forms.

Older Cherokee fonts may cover the cap-height forms more broadly than the lowercase set. That is why a font can display the corresponding cap-height character but leave ꮥ as a square.

How do I type ꮥ?

Use a Cherokee keyboard layout that includes the lowercase series.

Cherokee Nation's PC guide documents a one-key/one-stroke layout and a separate Cherokee Phonetic layout that accepts Latin-letter Cherokee input. These are distinct input methods, not one universal key sequence; the result also depends on the layout and application.

If the character appears as an empty square, the text is there but the current font lacks this glyph. Choose a Unicode-compatible font with Cherokee lowercase coverage.