Cherokee Small Letter Tlu

ꮱ is the Cherokee syllable conventionally written tlu in Latin letters.

Each character in Cherokee's syllabary stands for a spoken syllable, so the surrounding characters supply a word's meaning.

By around 1809, Sequoyah was thinking about written communication; the syllabary was complete by 1821. He first tried a symbol for each word, then built the system around syllables. A printed Christian Bible gave him examples of letter shapes, but he assigned the signs values from Cherokee speech.

The Cherokee Nation adopted the syllabary in 1825. Cherokee collaborators and missionary Samuel Worcester, a Christian minister, finalized Cherokee type in 1827. In 1828, the Cherokee Phoenix began printing news in Cherokee and English, helping sustain communication as removal pressure and political divisions threatened Cherokee unity.

Why is ꮱ smaller than many Cherokee letters?

The small form is lowercase; its uppercase partner is Ꮱ.

Cherokee writing was traditionally caseless, so many texts use only cap-height forms. Smaller forms were added to support cased writing without changing the layout older Cherokee fonts expected.

What does it mean if someone sends ꮱ alone?

Alone, ꮱ identifies a syllable but not the intended word.

It may be a character sample or a fragment. Ask which Cherokee word, lesson, or phrase it belongs to.

Beside Latin tlu, those letters are the conventional transliteration of the syllable, not its English translation.