Teeter Alphabet

Teeter Alphabet Resources

The Teeter alphabet or Maliseet system was developed in the 1960s by Karl Teeter, a linguistics professor from Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he collected stories from elders in several of our communities. It uses the standard English alphabet and the upside down e (b) also known as a schwa, which is a universal symbol used in English dictionaries to help with pronunciation. In English the sound is represented by different letters (a in above, the first e in event, the i in sentiment, the second o in opposite, and the u in upon), but in the Maliseet writing system the same sound is always represented by the schwa or ə.

Students attending immersion programs throughout Wəlastəkok are taught in this writing system however, are also taught how to convert over into the Leavitt system. Some successful students can read and write in both.

In conclusion, the only difference between these two alphabet systems are 3 letters; the q, u, and o are represented in the Teeter alphabet as kw, o, and ə.

 We have a special font called Maliseet Times New Roman which produces a schwa/ə when a “b” is typed. (The letter “b” was used since there are no “b’s” used in writing in either alphabet.) This font can be easily installed on any computer, but if a computer does not have our font, a schwa may be taken from the list of unicode symbols on most computers and manually entered as needed. The above Maliseet word will be written as W∂last∂kok using this avenue.

Note by Andrea Bear Nicholas, Professor Emerita, St. Thomas University, May 2015