CHEROKEE LANGUAGE

Original distribution of the Cherokee language

'Cherokee' (; ''Tsalagi'') 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 polysynthetic, places an emphasis on syllables, and is very complex to learn for English-speakers.
For years, many people wrote transliterated Cherokee on the Internet or used poorly intercompatible 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. As of January 2007, however, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma still officially uses a non-unicode font for online documents, including online editions of the ''Cherokee Phoenix''.
The Cherokee language does not contain any "r" based sounds, and as such, the word "Cherokee" when spoken in the language is expressed as Tsa-la-gi (pronounced Jah-la-gee, or Cha-la-gee) by native speakers, since these sounds most closely resemble the English language. A Southern Cherokee group did speak a local dialect with a trill consonant "r" sound, after early contact with Europeans of both French and Spanish ancestry in Georgia and Alabama during the early 18th century (This "r" sound spoken in the dialect of the Elati, or Lower, Cherokee area – Georgia and Alabama – became extinct in the 19th century around the time of the Trail of Tears, examples are Tsaragi or Tse-La-gee). The ancient Ani-kutani (ᎠᏂᎫᏔᏂ) dialect and Oklahoma dialects do not contain any 'r'-based sounds.

Computer representation

Language drift

Cherokee language in popular culture

Phonology

Cherokee only has one labial consonant, , which is relatively new to the language, unless one counts the Cherokee ''w'' a labial instead of a velar.

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Aspirated stop		t		k
Unaspirated stop		d		g
Affricate
Fricative		s			h
Nasal	m	n
Approximant			j
Lateral		l

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Diphthongs

Cherokee has only one diphthong native to the language:

★ ai
Another exception to the phonology above is the modern Oklahoma use of the loanword "automobile," with the sound and sound of English.

Tone

Cherokee has a robust tonal system in which tones may be combined in various ways, following subtle and complex tonal rules that vary from community to community. While the tonal system is undergoing a gradual simplification in many areas (no doubt as part of Cherokee's often falling victim to second-language status), the tonal system remains extremely important in meaning and is still held strongly by many, especially older speakers. It should be noted that the syllabary does not normally display tone, and that 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.

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 pronominal prefix, a verb root, an aspect suffix, and a modal suffix. Consider the following verb:

Verb form 'ge:ga'
g- e: -g -a
PRONOMINAL PREFIX VERB ROOT "to go" ASPECT SUFFIX MODAL SUFFIX

Verb form 'ge:ga'
g-	e:	-g	-a
PRONOMINAL PREFIX	VERB ROOT "to go"	ASPECT SUFFIX	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.
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.

Writing system

Main articles: Cherokee syllabary

Cherokee is written in an 85-character syllabary invented by Sequoyah (also known as George Guess). Some symbols do resemble Latin alphabet letters, but with completely different sound values; Sequoyah had seen English writing, but didn't know how to read it.
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 ''di-ti-yo-hi-hi'' (Cherokee:ᏗᏘᏲᎯᎯ) which means "he argues repeatedly and on purpose with a purpose". This is the Cherokee word for ''attorney''. Another example is ''di-da-ni-yi-s-gi'' (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 ''ga-so-li-ne'' (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 "nu-wi-ta" 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 ''a-ma-di-ka-ni-gv-na-gv-na'' (Cherokee:ᎠᎹᏗᎧᏂᎬᎾᎬᎾ) which means "the water is all gone gone from here" -- i.e. "no water".
Other examples of adopted words are ''ka-wi'' (Cherokee:ᎧᏫ) for ''coffee'' and ''wa-tsi'' (Cherokee:ᏩᏥ) for ''watch'' (which led to ''u-ta-na wa-tsi'' (Cherokee:ᎤᏔᎾ ᏩᏥ) or "big watch" for ''clock'').

Computer representation

Cherokee is represented in Unicode, in the character range U+13A0 to U+13F4.

	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
13A0	Ꭰ	Ꭱ	Ꭲ	Ꭳ	Ꭴ	Ꭵ	Ꭶ	Ꭷ	Ꭸ	Ꭹ	Ꭺ	Ꭻ	Ꭼ	Ꭽ	Ꭾ	Ꭿ
13B0	Ꮀ	Ꮁ	Ꮂ	Ꮃ	Ꮄ	Ꮅ	Ꮆ	Ꮇ	Ꮈ	Ꮉ	Ꮊ	Ꮋ	Ꮌ	Ꮍ	Ꮎ	Ꮏ
13C0	Ꮐ	Ꮑ	Ꮒ	Ꮓ	Ꮔ	Ꮕ	Ꮖ	Ꮗ	Ꮘ	Ꮙ	Ꮚ	Ꮛ	Ꮜ	Ꮝ	Ꮞ	Ꮟ
13D0	Ꮠ	Ꮡ	Ꮢ	Ꮣ	Ꮤ	Ꮥ	Ꮦ	Ꮧ	Ꮨ	Ꮩ	Ꮪ	Ꮫ	Ꮬ	Ꮭ	Ꮮ	Ꮯ
13E0	Ꮰ	Ꮱ	Ꮲ	Ꮳ	Ꮴ	Ꮵ	Ꮶ	Ꮷ	Ꮸ	Ꮹ	Ꮺ	Ꮻ	Ꮼ	Ꮽ	Ꮾ	Ꮿ
13F0	Ᏸ	Ᏹ	Ᏺ	Ᏻ	Ᏼ

A single Cherokee font is supplied with Mac OS X, version 10.3 (Panther) and later and Windows Vista. Cherokee is also supported by free fonts found at languagegeek.com, and the shareware fonts Code2000 and Everson Mono.

★ languagegeek.com fonts

★ Everson Mono

Language drift

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.

Drifted Otali Sequoyah Syllabary Mapping
Otali Syllable Sequoyah Syllabary Index Sequoyah Syllabary Char 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

Drifted Otali Sequoyah Syllabary Mapping
Otali Syllable	Sequoyah Syllabary Index	Sequoyah Syllabary Char	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