Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised May 27, 2026

Yugtun script

The Yugtun or Alaska script is a syllabary invented around the year 1900 by Uyaquq to write the Central Alaskan Yup'ik language. Uyaquq, who was monolingual in Yup'ik but had a son who was literate in English, initially used Indigenous pictograms as a form of proto-writing that served as a mnemonic in preaching the Bible. However, when he realized that this did not allow him to reproduce the exact words of a passage the way the Latin alphabet did for English-speaking missionaries, he and his assistants developed it until it became a full syllabary. Although Uyaquq never learned English or the Latin alphabet, he was influenced by both. The syllable kut, for example, resembles the cursive form of the English word good.

Last revised
May 27, 2026
Read time
≈ 1 min
Length
236 w
Citations
5
Source
Wikipedia ↗
Yugtun
Script type
Syllabary
CreatorUyaquq
Period
1900
DirectionLeft-to-right Edit this on Wikidata
LanguagesCentral Alaskan Yup'ik
Unicode
Not in Unicode
The Lord's Prayer in Yugtun script.1 source ↗

The Yugtun or Alaska script is a syllabary invented around the year 1900 by Uyaquq to write the Central Alaskan Yup'ik language. Uyaquq, who was monolingual in Yup'ik but had a son who was literate in English,2 initially used Indigenous pictograms as a form of proto-writing that served as a mnemonic in preaching the Bible. However, when he realized that this did not allow him to reproduce the exact words of a passage the way the Latin alphabet did for English-speaking missionaries, he and his assistants developed it until it became a full syllabary.3 Although Uyaquq never learned English or the Latin alphabet, he was influenced by both.2 The syllable kut, for example, resembles the cursive form of the English word good.

The Yup'ik language is now generally written in the Latin alphabet.2

Bibliography

Bibliography

  • Albertine Gaur, 2000. Literacy and the Politics of Writing, ISBN 978-1841500119
  • Alfred Schmitt, 1951. Die Alaska-Schrift und ihre schriftgeschichtliche Bedeutung, Simons, Marburg
  • Alfred Schmitt, 1981. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Schrift. Eine Schriftentwicklung um 1900 in Alaska, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden (Reprint der Ausgabe Leipzig 1940), ISBN 3-447-02162-4
    • Vol. 1 Text, vol. 2. Abbildungen
References

References

  1. The Pater Noster in Uyaquk's pictograms, 1909
  2. Coulmas, Florian (1999). "Yupik writing". The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Blackwell Publishers. pp. 572–573. ISBN 9780631194460.
  3. Ian James, "Yugtun script", Sky Knowledge, April 2012