Cherokee language
Encyclopedia
Cherokee is an Iroquoian language
spoken by the Cherokee
people which uses a unique syllabary
writing system. It is the only Southern Iroquoian language that remains spoken. Cherokee is a polysynthetic language
.
in the nineteenth century. In his Myths of the Cherokee (1888) he reports:
on the Qualla Boundary
. The Overhill or Western dialect is spoken in Oklahoma. The Overhill dialect has an estimated 9000 speakers. The Lower dialect spoken by the inhabitants of the Lower Towns in the vicinity of the South Carolina–Georgia border had r as the liquid consonant in its inventory, while both the contemporary Kituhwa or Ani-kituwah dialect spoken in North Carolina and the Overhill dialects contain l. As such, the word "Cherokee" when spoken in the language is expressed as Tsalagi by native speakers.
, m–which is relatively new to the language. The language also lacks p and b. In the case of p, qu is often substituted (as in the name of Cherokee Wikipedia
, Wi-gi-que-di-ya).
un. Other vowels, when ending a word, are often nasalized. Vowels can be short or long.
Another exception to the phonology above is the modern Oklahoma use of the loanword "automobile," with the /ɔ/ sound and /b/ sound of English.
language with six tones
, two of which are level (low, high) and the other four of which are contour (rising, falling, highfall, lowfall). While the tonal system is undergoing a gradual simplification in many areas, it remains important in meaning and is still held strongly by many, especially older, speakers. The syllabary, however, does not display tone, and real meaning discrepancies are rare within the native-language Cherokee-speaking community. The same goes for transliterated Cherokee ("osiyo", "dohitsu", etc.), which is rarely written with any tone markers, except in dictionaries. Native speakers can tell the difference between tone-distinguished words by context.
.
prefix
, a verb root, an aspect
suffix, and a modal suffix. For example, the verb form ge:ga, "I am going," has each of these elements:
The pronominal prefix is g-, which indicates first person singular. The verb root is -e, "to go." The aspect suffix that this verb employs for the present-tense stem is -g-. The present-tense modal suffix for regular verbs in Cherokee is -a
The following is a conjugation in the present tense of the verb to go. Please note that there is no distinction between dual and plural in the 3rd person.
The translation uses the present progressive ("at this time I am going"). Cherokee differentiates between progressive ("I am going") and habitual ("I go") more than English does.
The forms gegoi, hegoi, egoi represent "I often/usually go", "you often/usually go", and "she/he/it often/usually goes", respectively.
Verbs can also have prepronominal prefixes, reflexive prefixes, and derivative suffixes. Given all possible combinations of affixes, each regular verb can have 21,262 inflected forms.
Cherokee does not make gender distinctions. For example, gawoniha can mean either "she is speaking" or "he is speaking."
1. Live
2. Flexible (most common)
3. Long (narrow, not flexible)
4. Indefinite (solid, heavy relative to size)
5. Liquid (or container of)
Example:
There have been reports that the youngest speakers of Cherokee are using only the Indefinite forms, suggesting a decline in the system of shape classification.
A Cherokee sentence may not have a verb as when two noun phrases form a sentence. In such a case, word order is flexible. For example, na asgaya agidoda ("that man is my father"). A noun phrase might be followed by an adjective, such as in agidoga utana ("my father is big").
invented by Sequoyah
(also known as Guest or George Gist). Some symbols resemble Latin alphabet
letters, but with completely different sound values; Sequoyah had seen English, Hebrew, and Greek writing but did not know how to read them.
Two other writing systems beside the syllabary are a simple Latin alphabet
transliteration
of the language or a linguistic system with diacritical marks
.
Many words, however, have been adopted from the English language – for example, gasoline, which in Cherokee is gasoline (Cherokee:ᎦᏐᎵᏁ). Many other words were adopted from the languages of tribes who settled in Oklahoma in the early 1900s. One interesting and humorous example is the name of Nowata, Oklahoma
. The word "nowata" is a Delaware word for "welcome" (more precisely the Delaware word is "nuwita" which can mean "welcome" or "friend" in the Delaware language). The white settlers of the area used the name "nowata" for the township, and local Cherokees, being unaware the word had its origins in the Delaware language, called the town Amadikanigvnagvna (Cherokee:ᎠᎹᏗᎧᏂᎬᎾᎬᎾ) which means "the water is all gone gone from here" – i.e. "no water."
Other examples of adopted words are kawi (Cherokee:ᎧᏫ) for coffee and watsi (Cherokee:ᏩᏥ) for watch (which led to utana watsi (Cherokee:ᎤᏔᎾ ᏩᏥ) or "big watch" for clock).
Meaning expansion can be illustrated by the words for "warm" and "cold". They also mean "south" and "north" by an obvious extension. Around the time of the American Civil War
, they were further extended to US party labels, Democratic
and Republican
, respectively.
There are two main dialects of Cherokee spoken by modern speakers. The Giduwa dialect (Eastern Band) and the Otali Dialect (also called the Overhill dialect) spoken in Oklahoma. The Otali dialect has drifted significantly from Sequoyah's syllabary in the past 150 years, and many contracted and borrowed words have been adopted into the language. These noun and verb roots in Cherokee, however, can still be mapped to Sequoyah's syllabary. In modern times, there are more than 85 syllables in use by modern Cherokee speakers. Modern Cherokee speakers who speak Otali employ 122 distinct syllables in Oklahoma.
Cherokee on the internet or used poorly compatible fonts to type out the syllabary. However, since the fairly recent addition of the Cherokee syllables to Unicode
, the Cherokee language is experiencing a renaissance in its use on the Internet. For example, the entire New Testament is online in Cherokee Syllabary, and there is a Cherokee language Wikipedia featuring over 200 articles. Since 2003, all Apple computers come with a Cherokee font installed.
Cherokee Nation members Joseph L. Erb
, Roy Boney, Jr., and Thomas Jeff Edwards worked with Apple to bring official Cherokee language support to the iPhone and iPod Touch
in iOS 4.1 (released 8-Sept-2010) and for the iPad
with iOS 4.2.1 (released 22-Nov-2010).
Most Linux distributions support Cherokee input and display in any font containing the characters in Unicode environments.
On March 25, 2011, Google announced the option to perform searches in Cherokee.
by the band Clannad features Máire Brennan singing in Cherokee as well as Mohican
. Cherokee rapper Litefoot
incorporates Cherokee into songs, as do Rita Coolidge
's band Walela
and the intertribal drum group, Feather River Singers.
Iroquoian languages
The Iroquoian languages are a First Nation and Native American language family.-Family division:*Ruttenber, Edward Manning. 1992 [1872]. History of the Indian tribes of Hudson's River. Hope Farm Press....
spoken by the Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
people which uses a unique syllabary
Cherokee syllabary
The Cherokee syllabary is a syllabary invented by Sequoyah to write the Cherokee language in the late 1810s and early 1820s. His creation of the syllabary is particularly noteworthy in that he could not previously read any script. He first experimented with logograms, but his system later developed...
writing system. It is the only Southern Iroquoian language that remains spoken. Cherokee is a polysynthetic language
Polysynthetic language
In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i.e., languages in which words are composed of many morphemes. Whereas isolating languages have a low morpheme-to-word ratio, polysynthetic languages have extremely high morpheme-to-word ratios.Not all languages can be...
.
North American etymology
The North American origins and eventual English language form of "Cherokee" were researched by James MooneyJames Mooney
James Mooney was an American ethnographer who lived for several years among the Cherokee. He did major studies of Southeastern Indians, as well as those on the Great Plains...
in the nineteenth century. In his Myths of the Cherokee (1888) he reports:
- "It first appears as Chalaque in the Portuguese narrative of De Soto's expedition, published originally in 1557, while we find Cheraqui in a French document of 1699, and Cherokee as an English form as early, at least, as 1708. The name has thus an authentic [sic] history of 360 years." Cherokee is also taught as a second-language in Northwest Georgia.
Modern dialects
Cherokee has three major dialects. The Lower dialect became extinct around 1900. The Middle or Kituhwa dialect is spoken by the Eastern bandEastern Band of Cherokee Indians
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians , is a federally recognized Native American tribe in the United States of America, who are descended from Cherokee who remained in the Eastern United States while others moved, or were forced to relocate, to the west in the 19th century. The history of the...
on the Qualla Boundary
Qualla Boundary
The Qualla Boundary is the territory where the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians reside in western North Carolina.-Location:...
. The Overhill or Western dialect is spoken in Oklahoma. The Overhill dialect has an estimated 9000 speakers. The Lower dialect spoken by the inhabitants of the Lower Towns in the vicinity of the South Carolina–Georgia border had r as the liquid consonant in its inventory, while both the contemporary Kituhwa or Ani-kituwah dialect spoken in North Carolina and the Overhill dialects contain l. As such, the word "Cherokee" when spoken in the language is expressed as Tsalagi by native speakers.
Phonology
Cherokee only has one labial consonantLabial consonant
Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...
, m–which is relatively new to the language. The language also lacks p and b. In the case of p, qu is often substituted (as in the name of Cherokee Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, Wi-gi-que-di-ya).
Consonants
The consonant inventory for North Carolina Cherokee is given in the table below. The consonants of all Iroquoian languages pattern so that they may be grouped as (oral) obstruents, sibilants, laryngeals, and resonants (Lounsbury 1978:337). Obstruents are non-distinctively aspirated when they precede h. There is some variation in how orthographies represent these allophones. The orthography used in the table represents the aspirated allophones as th, kh, and tsh. Another common orthography represents the unaspirated allophones as d, g, and dz and the aspirated allophones as t, k, and ts (Scancarelli 2005:359–62). The unaspirated plosives and affricate are optionally voiced intervocally. In other dialects, the affricate is a palatal (like ch in "church"), and a lateral affricate (like tl in "atlas") may also be present.| Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals... |
Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
t | k | ʔ | ||
| Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :... |
ts | ||||
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
s | h | |||
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m | n | |||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
l | j (y) | ɰ (w) |
Vowels
There are six short vowels and six long vowels in the Cherokee inventory. As with all Iroquoian languages, this includes a nasalized vowel (Lounsbury 1978:337). In the case of Cherokee, the nasalized vowel is a schwa, which most orthographies represent as v and is pronounced [ɜ] as "u" in "but"; since it is nasal, it sounds rather like FrenchFrench language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
un. Other vowels, when ending a word, are often nasalized. Vowels can be short or long.
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
i iː | u uː | |
| Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel... |
e eː | ə̃ ə̃ː | o oː |
| Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
a aː |
Diphthongs
Cherokee has only one diphthong native to the language:- ai /ai/
Another exception to the phonology above is the modern Oklahoma use of the loanword "automobile," with the /ɔ/ sound and /b/ sound of English.
Tone
Cherokee is a pitch accentPitch accent
Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
language with six tones
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
, two of which are level (low, high) and the other four of which are contour (rising, falling, highfall, lowfall). While the tonal system is undergoing a gradual simplification in many areas, it remains important in meaning and is still held strongly by many, especially older, speakers. The syllabary, however, does not display tone, and real meaning discrepancies are rare within the native-language Cherokee-speaking community. The same goes for transliterated Cherokee ("osiyo", "dohitsu", etc.), which is rarely written with any tone markers, except in dictionaries. Native speakers can tell the difference between tone-distinguished words by context.
Tone Inventory
The tone name in the left-hand column displays the labels most recently used in studies of the language. The second represents the tone in standardized IPAInternational Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
.
| Tone Name | IPA |
|---|---|
| Low | ˨ |
| High | ˦ |
| Rising | ˨˦ |
| Falling | ˥˩ |
| Highfall | ˥˧ |
| Lowfall | ˧˩ |
Tone Environments
The high and low tones can appear on both long and short vowels in Cherokee, and remain at the same pitch throughout the duration of the vowel sound. Contour tones in Cherokee appear only in underlying long vowels. At the ends of words in colloquial speech, there is a tendency to drop off a long vowel into a short vowel; this results in the highfall tone being produced as a high tone in faster speech.Highfall
Highfall has a unique grammatical usage, primarily appearing with adjectives and adverbials along with most nouns derived from verbs. It only appears in verbs subordinate to another element of the sentence. When a highfall appears on a verb it changes the verbs' role in the sentence, typically to one of four main categories: agentive derivation, modal, object derivation, or subordination.Grammar
Cherokee, like many Native American languages, is polysynthetic, meaning that many morphemes may be linked together to form a single word, which may be of great length. Cherokee verbs, the most important word type, must contain as a minimum a pronominalPronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
prefix
Prefix
A prefix is an affix which is placed before the root of a word. Particularly in the study of languages,a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the words to which it is affixed.Examples of prefixes:...
, a verb root, an aspect
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
suffix, and a modal suffix. For example, the verb form ge:ga, "I am going," has each of these elements:
Verb form ge:ga g- e: -g -a PRONOMINAL PREFIX VERB ROOT "to go" ASPECT SUFFIX MODAL SUFFIX
The pronominal prefix is g-, which indicates first person singular. The verb root is -e, "to go." The aspect suffix that this verb employs for the present-tense stem is -g-. The present-tense modal suffix for regular verbs in Cherokee is -a
The following is a conjugation in the present tense of the verb to go. Please note that there is no distinction between dual and plural in the 3rd person.
Full conjugation of Root Verb-e- going Singular Dual incl. Dual excl. Plural excl. Plural incl. 1st gega - I'm going inega - We're going (you + I) osdega - We two are going (not you) otsega - We're all going (3+, not you) idega we're all going (3+, including you) 2nd hega - you're going 'sdega - you two are going itsega - you are all going 3rd ega - she/he/it's going anega They are going
The translation uses the present progressive ("at this time I am going"). Cherokee differentiates between progressive ("I am going") and habitual ("I go") more than English does.
The forms gegoi, hegoi, egoi represent "I often/usually go", "you often/usually go", and "she/he/it often/usually goes", respectively.
Verbs can also have prepronominal prefixes, reflexive prefixes, and derivative suffixes. Given all possible combinations of affixes, each regular verb can have 21,262 inflected forms.
Cherokee does not make gender distinctions. For example, gawoniha can mean either "she is speaking" or "he is speaking."
Shape classifiers in verbs
Some Cherokee verbs require special classifiers which denote a physical property of the direct object. Only around 20 common verbs require one of these classifiers (such as the equivalents of "pick up", "put down", "remove", "wash", "hide", "eat", "drag", "have", "hold", "put in water", "put in fire", "hang up", "be placed", "pull along"). The classifiers can be grouped into five categories:1. Live
2. Flexible (most common)
3. Long (narrow, not flexible)
4. Indefinite (solid, heavy relative to size)
5. Liquid (or container of)
Example:
| Classifier Type | Cherokee | Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Live | hikasi | Hand him (something living) |
| Flexible | hinvsi | Hand him (something like clothes, rope) |
| Long, Indefinite | hidisi | Hand him (something like a broom, pencil) |
| Indefinite | hivsi | Hand him (something like food, book) |
| Liquid | hinevsi | Hand him (something like water) |
There have been reports that the youngest speakers of Cherokee are using only the Indefinite forms, suggesting a decline in the system of shape classification.
Word order
Simple declarative sentences usually have a subject-object-verb word order. Negative sentences have a different word order. Adjectives come before nouns, as in English. Demonstratives, such as nasgi ("that") or hia ("this"), come at the beginning of noun phrases. Relative clauses follow noun phrases. Adverbs precede the verbs that they are modifying. For example, "she's speaking loudly" is asdaya gawoniha (literally, "loud she's-speaking").A Cherokee sentence may not have a verb as when two noun phrases form a sentence. In such a case, word order is flexible. For example, na asgaya agidoda ("that man is my father"). A noun phrase might be followed by an adjective, such as in agidoga utana ("my father is big").
Writing system
Cherokee is written in an 85-character syllabarySyllabary
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
invented by Sequoyah
Sequoyah
Sequoyah , named in English George Gist or George Guess, was a Cherokee silversmith. In 1821 he completed his independent creation of a Cherokee syllabary, making reading and writing in Cherokee possible...
(also known as Guest or George Gist). Some symbols resemble Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
letters, but with completely different sound values; Sequoyah had seen English, Hebrew, and Greek writing but did not know how to read them.
Two other writing systems beside the syllabary are a simple Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
of the language or a linguistic system with diacritical marks
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
.
Books in Cherokee
- Awi Uniyvsdi Kanohelvdi ᎠᏫ ᎤᏂᏴᏍᏗ ᎧᏃᎮᎸᏗ: The Park Hill Tales. (2006) Sixkiller, Dennis, ed.
- Baptism: The Mode
- Cherokee Almanac (1860)
- "Christmas in those Days"
- Cherokee Driver's Manuel
- Cherokee Elementary Arithmetic (1870)
- "The Cherokee People Today"
- Cherokee Psalms: A Collection of Hymns in the Cherokee Language (1991). Sharpe, J. Ed., ed. and Daniel Scott, trans. ISBN 978-0-935741-16-2
- Cherokee Spelling Book (1924). J. D. Wofford
- Cherokee Stories. (1966) Spade & Walker
- Cherokee Vision of Elohi (1981 and 1997). Meredith, Howard, Virginia Sobral, and Wesley Proctor. ISBN 978-0-9660164-0-6
- The Four Gospels and Selected Psalms in Cherokee: A Companion to the Syllabary New Testament (2004). Holmes, Ruth Bradley. ISBN 978-0-8061-3628-8.
- Na Tsoi Yona Ꮎ ᏦᎢ ᏲᎾ: The Three Bears. (2007) Keeter, Ray D. and Wynema Smith. ISBN 0-9777339-0-4.
- Na Usdi Gigage Agisi Tsitaga Ꮎ ᎤᏍᏗ ᎩᎦᎨ ᎠᎩᏏ: The Little Red Hen. (2007) Smith, Wynema and Ray D. Keeter. ISBN 978-0-9777339-1-0.
Word creation
Due to the polysynthetic nature of the Cherokee language, new and descriptive words in Cherokee are easily constructed to reflect or express modern concepts. Some good examples are ditiyohihi (Cherokee:ᏗᏘᏲᎯᎯ) which means "he argues repeatedly and on purpose with a purpose." This is the Cherokee word for "attorney." Another example is didaniyisgi (Cherokee:ᏗᏓᏂᏱᏍᎩ) which means "the final catcher" or "he catches them finally and conclusively." This is the Cherokee word for "policeman."Many words, however, have been adopted from the English language – for example, gasoline, which in Cherokee is gasoline (Cherokee:ᎦᏐᎵᏁ). Many other words were adopted from the languages of tribes who settled in Oklahoma in the early 1900s. One interesting and humorous example is the name of Nowata, Oklahoma
Nowata, Oklahoma
Nowata is a city in Nowata County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 3,731 at the United States Census, 2010, a 6.0 percent decline from 3,971 at the 2000 census...
. The word "nowata" is a Delaware word for "welcome" (more precisely the Delaware word is "nuwita" which can mean "welcome" or "friend" in the Delaware language). The white settlers of the area used the name "nowata" for the township, and local Cherokees, being unaware the word had its origins in the Delaware language, called the town Amadikanigvnagvna (Cherokee:ᎠᎹᏗᎧᏂᎬᎾᎬᎾ) which means "the water is all gone gone from here" – i.e. "no water."
Other examples of adopted words are kawi (Cherokee:ᎧᏫ) for coffee and watsi (Cherokee:ᏩᏥ) for watch (which led to utana watsi (Cherokee:ᎤᏔᎾ ᏩᏥ) or "big watch" for clock).
Meaning expansion can be illustrated by the words for "warm" and "cold". They also mean "south" and "north" by an obvious extension. Around the time of the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, they were further extended to US party labels, Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
and Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
, respectively.
Language drift
| Drifted Otali Sequoyah Syllabary Mapping |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| Otali Syllable | Sequoyah Syllabary Index | Sequoyah Syllabary Chart | Sequoyah Syllable |
| nah | 32 | Ꮐ | nah |
| hna | 31 | Ꮏ | hna |
| qua | 38 | Ꮖ | qua |
| que | 39 | Ꮗ | que |
| qui | 40 | Ꮘ | qui |
| quo | 41 | Ꮙ | quo |
| quu | 42 | Ꮚ | quu |
| quv | 43 | Ꮛ | quv |
| dla | 60 | Ꮬ | dla |
| tla | 61 | Ꮭ | tla |
| tle | 62 | Ꮮ | tle |
| tli | 63 | Ꮯ | tli |
| tlo | 64 | Ꮰ | tlo |
| tlu | 65 | Ꮱ | tlu |
| tlv | 66 | Ꮲ | tlv |
| tsa | 67 | Ꮳ | tsa |
| tse | 68 | Ꮴ | tse |
| tsi | 69 | Ꮵ | tsi |
| tso | 70 | Ꮶ | tso |
| tsu | 71 | Ꮷ | tsu |
| tsv | 72 | Ꮸ | tsv |
| hah | 79 | Ꮿ | ya |
| gwu | 11 | Ꭻ | gu |
| gwi | 40 | Ꮘ | qui |
| hla | 61 | Ꮭ | tla |
| hwa | 73 | Ꮹ | wa |
| gwa | 38 | Ꮖ | qua |
| hlv | 66 | Ꮲ | tlv |
| guh | 11 | Ꭻ | gu |
| gwe | 39 | Ꮗ | que |
| wah | 73 | Ꮹ | wa |
| hnv | 37 | Ꮕ | nv |
| teh | 54 | Ꮦ | te |
| qwa | 06 | Ꭶ | ga |
| yah | 79 | Ꮿ | ya |
| na | 30 | Ꮎ | na |
| ne | 33 | Ꮑ | ne |
| ni | 34 | Ꮒ | ni |
| no | 35 | Ꮓ | no |
| nu | 36 | Ꮔ | nu |
| nv | 37 | Ꮕ | nv |
| ga | 06 | Ꭶ | ga |
| ka | 07 | Ꭷ | ka |
| ge | 08 | Ꭸ | ge |
| gi | 09 | Ꭹ | gi |
| go | 10 | Ꭺ | go |
| gu | 11 | Ꭻ | gu |
| gv | 12 | Ꭼ | gv |
| ha | 13 | Ꭽ | ha |
| he | 14 | Ꭾ | he |
| hi | 15 | Ꭿ | hi |
| ho | 16 | Ꮀ | ho |
| hu | 17 | Ꮁ | hu |
| hv | 18 | Ꮂ | hv |
| ma | 25 | Ꮉ | ma |
| me | 26 | Ꮊ | me |
| mi | 27 | Ꮋ | mi |
| mo | 28 | Ꮌ | mo |
| mu | 29 | Ꮍ | mu |
| da | 51 | Ꮣ | da |
| ta | 52 | Ꮤ | ta |
| de | 53 | Ꮥ | de |
| te | 54 | Ꮦ | te |
| di | 55 | Ꮧ | di |
| ti | 56 | Ꮨ | ti |
| do | 57 | Ꮩ | do |
| du | 58 | Ꮪ | du |
| dv | 59 | Ꮫ | dv |
| la | 19 | Ꮃ | la |
| le | 20 | Ꮄ | le |
| li | 21 | Ꮅ | li |
| lo | 22 | Ꮆ | lo |
| lu | 23 | Ꮇ | lu |
| lv | 24 | Ꮈ | lv |
| sa | 44 | Ꮜ | sa |
| se | 46 | Ꮞ | se |
| si | 47 | Ꮟ | si |
| so | 48 | Ꮠ | so |
| su | 49 | Ꮡ | su |
| sv | 50 | Ꮢ | sv |
| wa | 73 | Ꮹ | wa |
| we | 74 | Ꮺ | we |
| wi | 75 | Ꮻ | wi |
| wo | 76 | Ꮼ | wo |
| wu | 77 | Ꮽ | wu |
| wv | 78 | Ꮾ | wv |
| ya | 79 | Ꮿ | ya |
| ye | 80 | Ᏸ | ye |
| yi | 81 | Ᏹ | yi |
| yo | 82 | Ᏺ | yo |
| yu | 83 | Ᏻ | yu |
| yv | 84 | Ᏼ | yv |
| to | 57 | Ꮩ | do |
| tu | 58 | Ꮪ | du |
| ko | 10 | Ꭺ | go |
| tv | 59 | Ꮫ | dv |
| qa | 73 | Ꮹ | wa |
| ke | 07 | Ꭷ | ka |
| kv | 12 | Ꭼ | gv |
| ah | 00 | Ꭰ | a |
| qo | 10 | Ꭺ | go |
| oh | 03 | Ꭳ | o |
| ju | 71 | Ꮷ | tsu |
| ji | 69 | Ꮵ | tsi |
| ja | 67 | Ꮳ | tsa |
| je | 68 | Ꮴ | tse |
| jo | 70 | Ꮶ | tso |
| jv | 72 | Ꮸ | tsv |
| a | 00 | Ꭰ | a |
| e | 01 | Ꭱ | e |
| i | 02 | Ꭲ | i |
| o | 03 | Ꭳ | o |
| u | 04 | Ꭴ | u |
| v | 05 | Ꭵ | v |
| s | 45 | Ꮝ | s |
| n | 30 | Ꮎ | na |
| l | 02 | Ꭲ | i |
| t | 52 | Ꮤ | ta |
| d | 55 | Ꮧ | di |
| y | 80 | Ᏸ | ye |
| k | 06 | Ꭶ | ga |
| g | 06 | Ꭶ | ga |
There are two main dialects of Cherokee spoken by modern speakers. The Giduwa dialect (Eastern Band) and the Otali Dialect (also called the Overhill dialect) spoken in Oklahoma. The Otali dialect has drifted significantly from Sequoyah's syllabary in the past 150 years, and many contracted and borrowed words have been adopted into the language. These noun and verb roots in Cherokee, however, can still be mapped to Sequoyah's syllabary. In modern times, there are more than 85 syllables in use by modern Cherokee speakers. Modern Cherokee speakers who speak Otali employ 122 distinct syllables in Oklahoma.
Computer and smartphone usage
For years, many people wrote transliteratedTransliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
Cherokee on the internet or used poorly compatible fonts to type out the syllabary. However, since the fairly recent addition of the Cherokee syllables to Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
, the Cherokee language is experiencing a renaissance in its use on the Internet. For example, the entire New Testament is online in Cherokee Syllabary, and there is a Cherokee language Wikipedia featuring over 200 articles. Since 2003, all Apple computers come with a Cherokee font installed.
Cherokee Nation members Joseph L. Erb
Joseph L. Erb
Joseph Erb is a Native American computer animator, educator, and artist enrolled in the Cherokee Nation.-Background:Joseph Erb was born on January 7, 1974 and currently lives in Gore, Oklahoma. He earned his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania...
, Roy Boney, Jr., and Thomas Jeff Edwards worked with Apple to bring official Cherokee language support to the iPhone and iPod Touch
IPod Touch
The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...
in iOS 4.1 (released 8-Sept-2010) and for the iPad
IPad
The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...
with iOS 4.2.1 (released 22-Nov-2010).
Most Linux distributions support Cherokee input and display in any font containing the characters in Unicode environments.
On March 25, 2011, Google announced the option to perform searches in Cherokee.
Cherokee language in popular culture
The theme song "I Will Find You" from the 1992 film The Last of the MohicansThe Last of the Mohicans (1992 film)
The Last of the Mohicans is a 1992 historical epic film set in 1757 during the French and Indian War and produced by Morgan Creek Pictures. It was directed by Michael Mann and based on James Fenimore Cooper's novel of the same name, although it owes more to George B. Seitz's 1936 film adaptation...
by the band Clannad features Máire Brennan singing in Cherokee as well as Mohican
Mahican
The Mahican are an Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe, originally settling in the Hudson River Valley . After 1680, many moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. During the early 1820s and 1830s, most of the Mahican descendants migrated westward to northeastern Wisconsin...
. Cherokee rapper Litefoot
Litefoot
Gary Paul Davis , better known by his stage name Litefoot, is a Native American rapper and the founder of the Red Vinyl record label. He also portrayed Little Bear in the movie The Indian in the Cupboard.-Personal life:...
incorporates Cherokee into songs, as do Rita Coolidge
Rita Coolidge
Rita Coolidge is a multiple Grammy Award-winning American vocalist. During the 1970s and 1980s, she charted hits on Billboard's Pop, Country, Adult Contemporary and Jazz charts.-Career:...
's band Walela
Walela
Walela is a Native American trio of singers. The group was founded in 1997 by sisters Rita Coolidge and Priscilla Coolidge, with Priscilla's daughter Laura Satterfield as the third member.-Biography:...
and the intertribal drum group, Feather River Singers.
See also
- CherokeeCherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
(people) - Cherokee syllabaryCherokee syllabaryThe Cherokee syllabary is a syllabary invented by Sequoyah to write the Cherokee language in the late 1810s and early 1820s. His creation of the syllabary is particularly noteworthy in that he could not previously read any script. He first experimented with logograms, but his system later developed...
- Iroquoian languagesIroquoian languagesThe Iroquoian languages are a First Nation and Native American language family.-Family division:*Ruttenber, Edward Manning. 1992 [1872]. History of the Indian tribes of Hudson's River. Hope Farm Press....
- Native American Languages
- SyllabarySyllabaryA syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
Further reading
- Bruchac, Joseph. Aniyunwiya/Real Human Beings: An Anthology of Contemporary Cherokee Prose. Greenfield Center, N.Y.: Greenfield Review Press, 1995. ISBN 0-912678-92-5
- Cook, William Hinton (1979). A Grammar of North Carolina Cherokee. Ph.D. diss., Yale University. OCLCOCLCOCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. is "a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing information costs"...
7562394. - King, Duane H. (1975). A Grammar and Dictionary of the Cherokee Language. Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia. OCLC 6203735.
- Lounsbury, Floyd G. (1978). "Iroquoian Languages". in Bruce G. Trigger (ed.). Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 15: Northeast. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. pp. 334–343. OCLC 12682465.
- Munro, Pamela (ed.) (1996). Cherokee Papers from UCLA. UCLA Occasional Papers in Linguistics, no. 16. OCLC 36854333.
- Pulte, William, and Durbin Feeling. 2001. "Cherokee". In: Garry, Jane, and Carl Rubino (eds.) Facts About the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages: Past and Present. New York: H. W. Wilson. (Viewed at the Rosetta Project)
- Scancarelli, Janine (1987). Grammatical Relations and Verb Agreement in Cherokee. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles. OCLC 40812890.
- Scancarelli, Janine. "Cherokee Writing." The World's Writing Systems. 1998: Section 53. (Viewed at the Rosetta Project)
External links
- Cherokee Nation Dikaneisdi (Lexicon)
- Cherokee (Tsalagi) Lexicon
- Echota Tsalagi Language Project
- Cherokee New Testament Online Online translation of the New Testament. Currently the largest Cherokee document on the internet.
- Unicode Chart
- Official Cherokee Font (Not Unicode-compatible)
- WikiLang Cherokee page (Basic grammar information)
- CherokeeLessons.com (Hosts Creative Commons licensed materials including a textbook covering grammar and many hours of challenge/response based audio lesson files).
- UNILANG forum for freely available teaching materials. (Includes PDF textbook and audio files).
- Cherokee numerals