Cherokee Small Letter Su

It spells the spoken syllable “su.” Cherokee signs each stand for one syllable; the word gives the meaning.

Sequoyah, a Cherokee craftsman, created the Cherokee syllabary between 1815 and 1821 to write spoken Cherokee. The Cherokee Nation adopted it in 1825; from 1828 the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper printed it beside English. As of September 2026, Cherokee language programs still teach it.

Print used smaller Cherokee forms before Unicode added lowercase in 2015. A 2002 study examined a possible Cherokee link to Liberia’s Vai syllabary.