What is SRO?

Standard Roman Orthography (SRO) uses the letters of English alphabet (with a few modifications) to represent Cree language sounds. Each meaningful sound (or phoneme) is represented with one character. It is consistency of the sound-to-symbol correspondence that makes SRO effective.

SRO is also the spelling system that is most widely used for print publications in Cree, and has the greatest number of published books. As of 2011, SRO is taught and used in Cree language programs in schools, colleges and universities across the Western Canada.

Here is a table of sound correspondences adapted from Ken Paupanekis’s Introduction to Cree Language 1, Text and Student Handbook (FirstNationsUniversity, 2011).

Click on the highlighted links to hear audio of Solomon Ratt’s “Chants” to teach pronunciation of consonants and vowels.

SRO Vowels:	sounds as in English:	sounds as in Cree:
a	about	maskwa      ‘bear’
â	cat	âstam           ‘come here’
i	sit	mikot           ‘nose’
î	machine	nîna              ‘I, me’ (n-dialect)
o	foot	mispon        ‘it is snowing’
ô	food	kôna             ‘snow’
ê	café	pimohtê      ‘walk’
SRO Consonants:
p	pin or bin	pêtâ               ‘bring it here’
hp		akohp            ‘blanket’
t	tin or din	tânisi             ‘hello’
ht		mitâtaht       ‘ten’
c	chin	kêkâc            ‘already’
hc		anohc            ‘now, today’
k	kin or grin	kîmôc            ‘secretly’
hk		âhkosiw        ‘he/she is sick’
s	sin	sêmâk            ‘right away’
m	me	namôna         ‘not’ (n-dialect)
n	no	nîna                ‘I, me’ (n-dialect)
w	will	wiyâs             ‘meat’
y	yes	âsay                ‘already’
l	leaf	palacîs           ‘pants’  (l-dialect)
r	red	arîkis             ‘frog’ (r-dialect)

About vowels: Cree uses seven distinct vowel sounds. Three are “short vowels” (a, i, o). Four are “long vowels” which get a special mark (â, ê, î, ô). Some people call it a “roof” or a “hat”. We use a circumflex accent here, but others use macrons or acute accents. It doesn’t matter which symbol we choose, as long as we mark long vowels every time, because the difference between long and short vowels can change the meaning of a word.

About consonants: The English sound pairs p/b, t/d and k/g each represent two distinct phonemes. Cree only uses one of each pair, so the Cree sound of p, t and k falls can fall anywhere between English p and b, t and d, and k and g.