User:Oi40/Cherokee

Cherokee (ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ) or Iroquois, Tsalagi, Tslagi, Rickohockan, Rechahecrian, Southern Iroquoian, ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ, チェロキー語, is an Iroquian language spoken in North America by the Cherokee people. There are 16,000 people speaking in two dialects: Western Cherokee and Eastern Cherokee. The locations of ᏣᎳᎩ are east Oklahoma; North Carolina; and Arkansas. Speakers of ᏣᎳᎩ are generally in all realms and all ages with generally positive attitudes.

ᏣᎳᎩ (Cherokee) is also called: Iroquois, Tsalagi, Tslagi, Rickohockan, Rechahecrian, Southern Iroquoian, ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ, チェロキー語.

History
The Cherokee is the southernmost branch of the Iroquoian language family. Linguists believe that the Cherokee might have migrated from the Great Lakes region to the Southeast over some 3,000 years ago.

In 1540, the Cherokee took claim of land territory comprising of 40,000 square miles in the southeastern part of what later became the United States. This area included parts of the states of Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Upon the Cherokee's first contact with European settlers, the Cherokee occupied three different geographical regions. Due to this, three distinct Cherokee dialects were spoken. These three dialects were known was the Eastern, Middle, and Western dialects.

The Eastern or lower dialect is now extinct. Its main difference is the rolling "r". It is used instead the place of the "l" in the other dialects dialects. The Cherokee speakers of the Eastern dialect occupied what is now South Carolina and made the first contact with the British. Due to the wars and conflicts of the 1800's, the few remaining speakers were pushed into the other Cherokee groups further inland.

The Middle dialect (Kituwah) is spoken by the Cherokee now living on the Qualla reservation in North Carolina.

The Western dialect (The Overhill) is spoken by the Cherokee Nation in the West. Because of their isolation, the Kituwah dialect was severely less impacted by the influence of other Indian cultures. The Overhill dialect is the softest sounding of the between the several different dialects of the Cherokee language.

Geographic distribution
Cherokee is the most populous Native American language spoken in the U.S. states of Oklahoma, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Indiana, Georgia, Alabama, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Texas, Tennessee, and Kentucky.

Official status
The Cherokee language remains an essential part of the Cherokee history and its cultural identity, and both dialects of the Cherokee language have still been preserved throughout the years. ᏣᎳᎩ has been known as the co-official language of the Cherokee Nation along with English since 1991.

Dialects/Varieties
The two main dialects of Cherokee spoken by modern speakers are the Giduwa (Eastern Band) and Otali dialects. Originally the third dialect spoken by the Cherokee known as the Lower dialect has been extinct for about 200 years. This dialect of Cherokee was spoken around the region of South Carolina and Gerogia. Otali, significantly spoken in Oklahoma, is a dialect that drifted from Sequoyah's sllyabary about 150 or so years before it originated.

In modern times, there are more than 85 syllables in use by modern Cherokee speakers. Modern Cherokee speakers who speak Otali use around 122 distinct syllables in Oklahoma.

Sounds/Phonology
If there is a significant amount of information here, it is probably best to have a separate article on the phonology, called XXX phonology (eg Somali phonology). See WikiProject Phonetics/Phonology template for a suggested structure.

If a separate page is not warranted, it may still be best to divide the information in this section into sub-sections following the structure on the above phonology template.

If there is a separate page, give a brief summary here, eg the number of consonant and vowel phonemes; important features such as phonemic use of tone or vowel harmony; and unusual or interesting features of the language's phonology.

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. 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.

Cherokee has 17 verb tenses and 10 persons.

The following is a conjugation in the present tense of the verb to go.

There is no distinction between dual and plural in 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 ᎨᎪᎢ, ᎮᎪᎢ, ᎡᎪᎢ 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, ᎦᏬᏂᎭ gawoniha can mean either "she is speaking" or "he is speaking."

Pronouns and prefixes
Like many Native American languages, Cherokee has many pronominal prefixes that can index both subject and object. Pronominal prefixes always appear on verbs and can also appear on adjectives and nouns. There are two separate words which function as pronouns: aya "I, me" and nihi "you".

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:


 * Live
 * Flexible (most common)
 * Long (narrow, not flexible)
 * Indefinite (solid, heavy relative to size), also used as default category
 * 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 usage or full acquisition of the system of shape classification. Cherokee is the only Iroquoian language with this type of classificatory verb system, leading linguists to reanalyze it as a potential remnant of a noun incorporation system in Proto-Iroquoian. However, given the non-productive nature of noun incorporation in Cherokee, other linguists have suggested that classificatory verbs are the product of historical contact between Cherokee and non-Iroquoian languages, and instead that the noun incorporation system in Northern Iroquoian languages developed later.

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 ᎾᏍᎩ nasgi ("that") or ᎯᎠ 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 ᎠᏍᏓᏯ ᎦᏬᏂᎭ 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, Ꮎ ᎠᏍᎦᏯ ᎠᎩᏙᏓ na asgaya agidoda ("that man is my father"). A noun phrase might be followed by an adjective, such as in ᎠᎩᏙᏓ ᎤᏔᎾ agidoga utana ("my father is big"). A general outline of the grammar of the language. Focus on what makes the grammar of the language unique compared to other languages, related as well as unrelated. Lists of each word class and their individual properties, as well as full-fledged inflection or conjugation tables, are probably best put in a separate article.

Numbers
Cherokee uses Arabic numerals (0–9). The Cherokee council voted not to adopt Sequoyah's numbering system. Sequoyah created individual symbols for 1–20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 as well as a symbol for three zeros for numbers in the thousands, and a symbol for six zeros for numbers in the millions. These last two symbols, representing ",000" and ",000,000", are made up of two separate symbols each. They have a symbol in common, which could be used as a zero in itself.

Examples
Example #1: In English:

Later I will go to Yellow Hill.

In Cherokee:  Ohni Ela Wodi dagesi.

Example #2:

In English: My daughter (grown up daughter) loves her family (habitually or continually).

In Cherokee:  Agwetsi ageya duwaltina’v getsigeyuso’i.

Some short examples of the language in the writing system(s) used to write the language. You might also include sound samples of the language being spoken. Avoid making lists of tourist phrases such as "hello", "goodbye" and "where's the lavatory?" since these do not represent the specifics of either grammar or phonetics particularly well.

Language archives, texts, audio, video

 * Cherokee Phoenix, bilingual newspaper in Cherokee and English
 * Cherokee Traditions digital archive, from Western Carolina University
 * Cherokee New Testament Online Online translation of the New Testament. Currently the largest Cherokee document on the internet.
 * Cherokee Language Texts, from the Boston Athenæum: Schoolcraft Collection of Books in Native American Languages. Digital Collection.
 * Cherokee Language Texts, from the Boston Athenæum: Schoolcraft Collection of Books in Native American Languages. Digital Collection.