Cherokee (ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ|Tsa-la-gi Ga-wo-ni-hi-sdi) is a Native American language spoken in by the Cherokee people. It is written in the Latin alphabet and Sequoyah's Latin and Cyrillic based syllabary that has 85 letters.
Cherokee Syllabary[]
The first syllabics are Ꭰ,Ꭱ,Ꭲ,Ꭳ,Ꭴ,and Ꭵ; A E I O U and V
The next ones are Ꭶ, Ꭷ, Ꭸ, Ꭹ, Ꭺ, Ꭻ , and Ꭼ; GA, KA, GE, GI, GO, GU, GV
The Phonetic sound ‘V’ is actually sounded like the ‘u’ in ‘but’, not the ‘v’ sound that English-speakers would imagine.
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Cherokee is the big outlier, compared to its neighboring tribes in terms of linguistics.
Common words and phrases in Cherokee[]
Hello — (siyu) ᏏᏳ si-yu, or
Hello — (o-si-yo) ᎣᏏᏲ osiyo
Yes — (uuh) ᎥᎥ v-v
No — (tuh-la) Ꮭ tla
Name — (duu-do-uh) ᏚᏙᎥ du-do-v
Number — (se-stii) ᏎᏍᏗ se-s-di
Numbers:
1 - (sakuu) ᏌᏊ sa-quu
2 - (talii) ᏔᎵ ta-li
3 - (jodii) ᏦᏗ tso-di
4- (nvghi) ᏅᎩ nvh-gi
5- (hisgi) ᎯᏍᎩ hi-sgi
6- (sudali) ᏑᏓᎵ su-da-li
7- (gahlgwogi) ᎦᎮᏉᎩ ga-he-gwo-gi
8- (chanela, chunela) ᏣᏁᎳ, ᏧᏁᎳ cha-ne-la, chu-ne-la
9- (sohnela) ᏐᏁᎳ so-hne-la
10- (sgohi) ᏍᎪᎯ sgo-hi
Difficulties of learning Cherokee[]
Cherokee is a very difficult language to learn, which contributes to its rarity. It’s a Syllabic language, rather than an alphabetic language like English or Spanish. It contains many more symbols to remember than any alphabet, and some symbols look exactly like Latin letters, but represent a completely different sound.(e.g. Ꭰ sounds like A, Ꭲ sounds like I). However, it is the only Native American language to have a writing system, which gives the language some perks.
About 2,000 speakers are left, with only a handful under 40.