Duployan Letter Nasal U

It marks a nasal U, though other systems give it other roles. “Nasal” means the vowel is spoken with air passing through the nose. In French Duployé shorthand, this same mark also stood for the number one; Pernin shorthand used it for the brief form “in.”

Émile Duployé published the French system in 1860 as stenography: a way to record speech quickly with abbreviated strokes.

Father Jean-Marie-Raphaël Le Jeune, a Catholic priest, adapted Duployan into a main writing system for Chinook Jargon—a trade language of the Pacific Northwest—and some Indigenous languages of interior British Columbia, including Okanagan, Lillooet, Shuswap, and North Thompson. His Chinook Jargon newspaper, Kamloops Wawa, began publishing in 1891. The Shuswap called the script Chinook pepa; at an October 1892 gathering, some wrote down a song they heard in shorthand and shared it so others could join in that evening.

Why does it look different in a word?

Neighboring strokes can change where the nasal vowel sits. Duployan letters join into flowing word shapes. The surrounding letters determine whether this nasal vowel sits like a small mark outside the angle between strokes, follows one neighbor’s orientation, or keeps a fixed direction.

A font needs Duployan characters, and the app also needs text-shaping support for connected forms. Without shaping, letters can remain separate; without a suitable font, this character may appear as a blank box. The isolated chart glyph does not show every position it can take in a word.