Talk:Cherokee language

Syllabary

Should the Syllabary have its own page? If no objections I will go ahead and move to Cherokee script - FrancisTyers 02:56, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That would probably be a good idea, especially if these articles get expanded. (I just created a link to "Cherokee script", and then realized it didn't go anywhere!)

I made a correction. There are many recorded cases of illiterate people inventing writing systems. Perhaps Sequoyah was the only one in the US, but there's Vai in Liberia, Afaka in Surinam, Hmong in Laos, etc etc, and all are syllabaries. On one Micronesian island, when missionaries introduced the Roman alphabet and said "this is the letter bee", etc., the people completed the script by creating letters for ba, be, bo, bu! --kwami 09:10, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree with this idea, I came to the talk page thinking a separate page for the writing system might make sense. I would suggest Cherokee syllabary be added as the new article title with a redirect from Cherokee script. (Google gives "cherokee script" : 2,230; "cherokee syllabary" : 20,800 hits). --babbage 18:08, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Map

The map has got to be wrong; surely there is a significant number of Cherokee speakers at the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma? --Prosfilaes 06:45, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, today. But all the American language maps show the estimated location at time of contact. kwami 07:30, 2005 August 30 (UTC)

I discovered the Cherokee language is spoken by a few thousand transplants from the Dust bowl whom arrived in California during the 1930's and a large number of "okies" are of Native American descent in the first place. The language has made a small but noticable comeback in the Cherokee Nation and those of Cherokee ancestry across the U.S. are learning the language in increasing numbers, although the native tongue of Cherokees for living in the United States is English. +71.102.53.48 (talk) 06:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Speaker Estimate

15,000 to 22,000 is way too high of an estimate, especially if you are talking about fluent speakers. Even speaker that are conversant in the languages are probably well under 10,000.Uyvsdi (talk) 23:48, 31 December 2008 (UTC)Uyvsdi

Phonology

Question: are the o and e symbols given in the vowel chart correct? Both members of each pair are marked as long. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lhislop (talk • contribs) 02:00, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

That was certainly a mistake, and I've corrected it. But I also have a question about Cherokee phonology. The syllabary has separate symbols for syllables starting with /tl/ and with /kw/. Are these really consonant clusters in Cherokee, or are they rather the lateral affricate /t͜ɬ/ and the labialized velar stop /kʷ/? If these two are actually single segments, they should be added to the consonant inventory table. +Angr 23:43, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Cherokee Influence on Formation of the Southern American (English) Accent

I have read that the Cherokee language for example has many of the sounds that are now essential to the Southern American Accent, as do cousins of the Cherokee from the other Five Civilized Tribes. Remember that during the early times of European settlement in the American South that Native American tribes were equal or superior in influence to European settlers (with lots of intermarriage) and thus may have helped to shape early Southern American dialect and pronunciation.

Later on the massive influx of West African slaves may had added another layer of influence to various Southern American accents especially since "house slaves" (as opposed to slaves who worked in the fields) played a major role in raising white children. This may have also allowed West African languages to influence Southern American pronunciation and even the use of some words and grammar.

This is not to discount the European influences on the formation of various Southern American dialects, but neither should these non-European influences be left out.

98.245.150.162 (talk) 23:11, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

African influences on South American English is well documented - I've never heard of Native American influences, and frankly I don't see how that would have happened.·Maunus·ƛ· 23:16, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

You have to look at the early stages of European settlement when the Native American population was larger than the European--

Also (especially in the South) there was a great deal of intermarriage between early Scottish settlers and Native Americans that went on for generations.

Before Europeans began to outnumber Native Americans, the relations between Whites and Native peoples were completely different, and although sometimes hostile were usually actually very close relationships.

Later when Whites began to outnumber Indians is when the sustained trouble began.

But by then the Southern American accent had become established (with Native American influences) and new European settlers would assimilate into it.

98.245.150.162 (talk) 23:25, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

WP can only include info from reliable published sources, ans such information must be verifiable to other readers. You need to be more specific than "I have read that", otherwise it can't be included in the article. - BilCat (talk) 23:48, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Also, new sections go at the bottom of talk pages, not the top. Cresix (talk) 23:52, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I know that citations are needed. But you have to mention the issue before citations can be hunted down (I don't have time to do it all myself).

Sorry about posting on the top of the talk page, I forgot about that rule.

Best,

98.245.150.162 (talk) 20:08, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

P.P.S. I'll do some of the search for citations too, but the "Five Civilized Tribes" (all originally Southeastern Native American tribes, since forcibly relocated to Oklahoma) are the tribes thought to be early influenceers of the Southern American accent.

These tribes are all related to each other and include the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek (also called Muskogee), Chikisaw and Seminole.

98.245.150.162 (talk) 20:13, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Here is a quote from one source (again keep in mind that [for about three generations] there was a lot of mixing between Scotts-Irish settlers in the American South and Southern Native Americans, and it was only later that the most serious troubles began once whites started to outnumber Native Americans, but by then the local English accent had been influenced):

"The "Scots-Irish" dialect of southern English mingled with Cherokee and other Native American languages in a band running from western North Carolina to Oklahoma and East Texas, giving rise to the so-called backwoods, or highlands, southern dialect, which is faster and [more] high-pitched than tidewater southern and more nasal than Appalachian English. Some of the phonological features of the backwoods southern dialects undoubtedly come from Cherokee and other Native American languages. The south was the only area in the East where Native Americans mixed significantly with the whites. This occurred mostly with the poorer whites on the frontier. Substrate features include: nasality, tensing of vowels [e] instead of [E] rather than diphthongization as in Tidewater Southern English."

Here is the source (it's from a college course on linguistics, http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test3materials/AmericanDialects.htm ) obviously not usable for Wikipedia by itself, but it shows that there is University-level linguistics research behind this view.

98.245.150.162 (talk) 20:32, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Cherry-picking sources to inflate population

We need reliable sources for population estimates. Some random web page is not appropriate. This appears to be an attempt at population-inflation. Understandable as wishful thinking, but again not appropriate. Bear in mind that "speakers" may mean anyone who's learned the language, whereas we give an estimate for native speakers. It would be wonderful if native English-speaking Cherokee are teaching their children Cherokee as their first language, but we need reliable sources. Right now the best source we have is the 2010 census. Censuses are generally not too accurate when it comes to languages, though, so it would be better if we could come up w something better. — kwami (talk) 21:06, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

External links section and needs of language learners

Osiyo! We are editing from a Cherokee language learning Meetup at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. We add links to the external links section of this article when we discover new resources useful for others who are studying the Cherokee language. I would hope that Wikipedians would consider keeping these links and making this article useful for people who are actually speaking the language and keeping it alive, not just for linguists. Sgi! (Thank you!) --Djembayz (talk) 17:28, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I redirected an article back here

See Talk:Status of the Cherokee language for the reasons and that article's history for potential content that might be useful here. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 23:31, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Hellenic substrate in Cherokee or language shift

https://dnaconsultants.com/cherokees-spoke-greek-came-east-mediterranean. This is a site that explains that there is Greek influence in Cherokee language and art. There are even small remnants of Greek D.N.A in Cherokees. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:860A:6300:DC6D:2D94:795D:F009 (talk) 15:27, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Introduction: Native American Language with most Published Literature

The introduction section states that Cherokee is the Native language of the Americas with the most published literature, but only offers the bible as an example. I'm pretty sure the bible has been translated into most every extant language of the Americas (amirite?). It would be nice to have better examples, since Cherokee does hold this honored distinction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2402:7500:445:5CA4:B18F:F0D8:D6D1:3505 (talk) 16:45, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Durbin Feeling Language Center and other updates

A new draft for a Durbin Feeling, Cherokee National Treasure page includes language classes, books and the future learning center authorized in 2019. It would be great to mention Durbin Feeling, a Cherokee Linguist, and link to this page at least once in this article. Collaboration is appreciated! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Durbin_Feeling,_Cherokee_National_Treasure — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:DCE0:ADB0:D548:25DB:EC33:1A9B (talk) 21:04, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Third opinion

@Fdom5997:, please direct the Third Opinion to Talk Page discussion, and if there is no discussion, please start one here. Pyrrho the Skeptic (talk) 18:21, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@Fdom5997 and Eievie: Here's my unsolicited third opinion (this page is on my watchlist):

1. I prefer this version of the table. Its primary columns describe points of articulation and are split into subcolumns for secondary features where it applies. Nasals and approximants are better kept apart, since this is generally done so in descriptive linguistics. And the table has links.
2. It's nice to see you clubbing your heads about the table only, but what about the velar approximant? The table has [ɰ], the rest of the article has [w]. If you're so keen on fixing, please fix this too. We had this before with "ejective" [ɓ] in a Mayan language (I forgot which one).
3. Please don't edit war like this, it's just an embarrassment.

–Austronesier (talk) 20:27, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@Austronesier Thank you for your input. It's always great to hear the feedback from someone with an actual linguistics background! Fdom5997 (talk) 20:33, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't mean to embarrass. Just pretty it gets too funny to stop. Eievie (talk) 15:36, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

"as it is the indigenous language of North America in which the most literature has been published" ?

That can't possibly be true. Mexico is in North America, and complete books have been published in Nahuatl for hundreds of years, as well as numerous dictionaries. Jimhoward72 (talk) 17:20, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Dead link for country names

The Google Site given for Cherokee country names is a dead link. If there is a WayBack Machine link, could someone replace it with that? Chmess (talk) 00:00, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Source for these claims?

"About eight fluent speakers die each month, and only a handful of people under the age of 40 are fluent." The cited news article certainly does not explicitly make the latter claim (It is perhaps implied, however, a handful is a claim too specific to be inferred). I also have my doubts about the validity of the first claim (That 8 speakers die per month), as the cited article is not a survey, but rather a seemingly deleted news article reporting on some panelist. Is it not better to simply remove this sentence altogether? Boundary.operator (talk) 02:45, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't think so. I made some clarifying / attribution / copy editing edits. Biosthmors (talk) 21:04, 16 September 2023 (UTC)