Cherokee language

The Cherokee language, also called Tsalagi, is the traditional language of the Cherokee people. It belongs to the Iroquoian language family and is considered endangered, with very few people still speaking it fluently. In 2018, there were about 1,520 Cherokee speakers out of around 376,000 Cherokee people. Most of these speakers are older, and the number of fluent speakers is getting smaller each year.

Efforts are being made to keep the Cherokee language alive. Schools like the New Kituwah Academy in North Carolina and the Cherokee Immersion School in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, teach children to speak Cherokee. These schools help preserve the language for future generations.

Cherokee is a special kind of language called polysynthetic, which means one word can express ideas that would take several words in English. It uses a unique writing system called a syllabary. The Cherokee language has a rich history, with many books, dictionaries, and even parts of the Bible published in Cherokee. The Cherokee Phoenix was the first newspaper published by Native Americans in the United States in a Native American language.

Classification

Cherokee is an Iroquoian language and the only Southern Iroquoian language spoken today. Experts think the Cherokee people moved to the southeast from the Great Lakes region about three thousand years ago, bringing their language with them. Even after this long separation, the Cherokee language still shares some similarities with languages spoken around the Great Lakes, like Mohawk, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora.

History

Literacy

Before the 1820s, the Cherokee language was only spoken. A man named Sequoyah created a special way to write it using symbols called the Cherokee syllabary. He made this system without knowing how to read any other writing. He first tried to make a symbol for every word, but that was too hard. Then he made a symbol for each small part of speech, called a syllable.

Sequoyah taught this new writing to his young daughter and then to others. Soon, many Cherokees learned to read and write. They even made a newspaper called the Cherokee Phoenix with both Cherokee and English. Today, the Cherokee language is still used, and even some smartphones now have a Cherokee language interface to help keep the language alive.

Geographic distribution

The Cherokee language is mainly spoken in some areas of Oklahoma and in places like Big Cove and Snowbird in North Carolina.

Dialects

When Europeans first arrived, there were three main types of Cherokee language. The Lower type, once spoken near the border of South Carolina and Georgia, is no longer used. Today, the Middle type (Kituwah) is spoken by the Eastern Band on the Qualla Boundary and has about 200 speakers. The Overhill, or Western, type is used in eastern Oklahoma and by the Snowbird Community in North Carolina with about 1,300 speakers. The Western type is the most common and is considered the main type of the language. Both types have been influenced by English, and the Western type has also been affected by Spanish.

Language drift

Today, there are two main types of Cherokee language in use. The Giduwa (or Kituwah) type is spoken by the Eastern Band, and the Otali type, also called the Overhill type, is spoken in Oklahoma. The Otali type has changed a lot from the original writing system created by Sequoyah over the past 150 years, with many new and borrowed words added to the language. However, these words in Cherokee can still be linked back to Sequoyah's writing system. Modern Cherokee speakers use more than 85 different syllables.

Status and preservation efforts

In 2019, the leaders of the three Cherokee tribes announced an emergency for the Cherokee language because it is in danger of disappearing. They asked for stronger programs to bring the language back to life. Today, there are about 1,500 to 2,100 people who can speak Cherokee, but many older speakers are passing away, and very few young people under 40 can speak it well.

Cherokee is an official language of the Cherokee Nation, meaning it is used in government and services just like English. Schools, such as the New Kituwah Academy, teach children to speak Cherokee as their first language through special programs that start when they are very young. Universities also offer Cherokee language classes to help more people learn. In 2022, the Cherokee Nation opened a large new language center to teach people of all ages to speak Cherokee without using English. The tribe has also created online lessons with many Cherokee words and phrases for everyone to use.

Phonology

The Cherokee language belongs to a group called Iroquoian languages, which have special sounds that set them apart from many other languages. For example, Cherokee does not use certain common sounds like "p" or "b" that appear in many other languages. Instead, Cherokee sometimes uses a combination of sounds, like "qw," to stand in for "p." There are also a few rare sounds, like "m," that appear only in a small number of Cherokee words.