Learning the Cherokee Language

The Cherokee nation are the largest Native American tribe in the United States. The Cherokee nation are a people native to North America. They were referred to as one of the Five Civilized Tribes.

At the time of European discovery in the sixteenth century, the Cherokee tribe resided on the Eastern seaboard of the United States.

Most were forcibly moved westward to the 1830s in what is now known as the Trail of Tears.

The Cherokee language is part of the Iroquois family of languages and is written in a syllabary (i.e. a set of written symbols that represent syllables).

For more information visit Cherokee Glossary.

A compilation of over 9500 entries of the Cherokee language. Reviewed and edited by five Cherokee speakers.

For the first time, the Cherokee people have a point of reference for the language - much of which was lost during the removal period.

Spiral bound to lay flat for easy study, this book contains the story of Sequoyah and the development of the syllabary, the Seven Clans families, and includes separate sections on animals, anatomy, food words, trees and plants.

Researched for over three years and reading from unpublished works on the Cherokee language, this book has been compiled from what is remembered.

This project was completed with the cooperation of dedicated Cherokees interested in seeing their language survive.

For more information visit Cherokee Glossary.

Each program contains a phrase booklet. - You'll hear the full pronunciation of the syllabary spoken by Sam Hider, Cherokee full-blood who spoke Cherokee until he was sent off to Chilocco Indian school. His grandmother walked the Trail of Tears in 1838 as a young girl.

Sam was born in 1907, died in 1990. The Sam Hider Health Clinic in Jay, OK was named in his honor.

A portion of each program is sent to the clinic in his name.

Greetings, food phrases, asking directions, animal names and much more makes this a wonderful choice to begin learning to speak Cherokee.

For more information visit Western Cherokee Sampler.

Marie Junaluska, tribal translator of the Eastern Band of Cherokees, recites the syllabary giving you the pronunciation of the language as it is spoken on the Qualla Boundary in Cherokee NC.

You'll learn conversational phrases, food terms, numbers, Cherokee family names, and more.

Recommended for the study of the Eastern Cherokee.

For more information visit Eastern Cherokee .

This five module CD program takes you from the Introduction to Cherokee program through five intermediate programs in one large ring binder.

This is the only Intermediate program available today!

Listening to the voices of Cherokee speakers and following the exercises, you'll learn more about the Cherokee verb, Set A and Set B pronoun prefixes, subject-object prefixes, family and relationship terms, body parts, both singular and plural, many useful phrases, verb conjugations, and translation exercises with poetry by Robert Conley.

If you're serious about learning to speak Cherokee, this book should be in your library. Levels may be purchased individually or as a set.

For more information visit Intermediate Cherokee Language Courses.

Like other languages, the Cherokee language is named after its people, the Cherokee. It is part of the Iroquoian language family, and it is the only Southern Native American language from the group that is still used.

The Cherokee language is associated with the South because its speakers reside in the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma.

Most people know of the Cherokee by way of the Trail of Tears. Basically, it was the American enforcement of relocation for all Native American tribes in the 1800s. Countless Cherokees died during this tragic process.

As for the language, Cherokee is a speech rich in syllabary, but you may be surprised to learn that it does not have values for the English letters "p" and "b".

The consonant "m" is also a recent. Some symbols of the language look like Latin letters (but don't sound anything like them), and whereas the English alphabet only has six vowels, the Cherokee language boasts twelve, both short and long. The Cherokee alphabet or syllabary has a total of eighty-five character strings.

Tsa-la-gi ("Cherokee" to natives) is a complicated dialect in that each verb can take on thousands of inferred forms. Many words are translated as phrases to the English ear; i.e., the word attorney is branded as "one who argues repeatedly on purpose for a purpose" in Cherokee.

The Cherokee are not exempt form adopting a few English terms of their own, however, similarly to how the English language has taken foreign lingo like R.S.V.P. (r?ndez s'il vous pla? under its wing. They also have slang.

Cherokee in today's world is comprised of two major dialects: the Giduwa and the Otali. The main difference is that the Northwestern Cherokee use tl sound while the Southeastern employ ts. Whichever the dialect, the tongue is spoken by up to 20,000 individuals throughout the Cherokee Nation.

The term "Cherokee" itself has been spelled at least fifty different ways in the past (the current spelling dates back to about the eighteenth century).

Its literal meaning is "people with another language". Aniyunwiya, or "the principal people", is what the Cherokees called themselves in the beginning. Most Cherokees are not raised bilingually today, but as they get older, most opt to learn English.

There are many self study courses online if you are interested in learning Cherokee yourself. It won't be the easiest process, however, as Cherokee is quite different from English.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/education-articles/the-cherokee-language-491223.html

About the AuthorJacob Lumbroso is an enthusiast for foreign languages, history, and foreign cultures. He writes articles on history and languages and has used Pimsleur courses to learn various languages.