Mi'kmaw hieroglyphs

Common card · No. 355823

Mi'kmaw hieroglyphic writing or Suckerfish script (Mi'kmawi'simk: Gomgwejui'gasit) was a writing system for the Mi'kmaq language, later superseded by various Latin scripts which are currently in use. Mi'kmaw are a Canadian First Nation whose homeland, called Mi'kma'ki, overlaps much of the Atlantic provinces. These glyphs, or gomgwejui'gaqan, were developed in the 1600s by French missionary Chrétien Le Clercq and follow but are unrelated to a prior pictograph and petroglyph tradition. The glyphs are logograms, with phonetic elements used alongside, including logographic, alphabetic, and ideographic information. As petroglyphs and pictographs were the writing system of Hand Talk, a sign language that was the historically most used language on the continent, it is unknown to academia what, if any, connection there is between sign language and Suckerfish script. The gomgwejui'gasultijig take their name from the gomgwej (plural: gomgwejg) or sucker fish whose tracks are visibly left on the...

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