Cherokee

Where it’s spoken

Cherokee (ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ Tsalagi Gawonihisdi) is spoken by members of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes — the Cherokee Nation and United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina. About 1,500 to 2,000 first-language speakers remain, mostly elderly, with extensive revitalization efforts underway.

What it sounds like

Cherokee has six vowels (a, e, i, o, u, plus the nasal v) and 15 consonants. The language is tonal in some analyses, with multiple pitch levels and contour tones on syllables. Stress and pitch interact in complex ways across multi-syllable words.

How it’s written

Cherokee is written in a syllabary invented around 1821 by Sequoyah, a Cherokee silversmith who created it without prior literacy. The syllabary has 85 characters, each representing a consonant-vowel combination (or a vowel alone). It is the only widely used Native American writing system invented by a native speaker.

History

Sequoyah’s syllabary spread rapidly, achieving high literacy among Cherokees by the 1830s — the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper began publication in 1828. The Trail of Tears (1838) and subsequent assimilationist policies devastated Cherokee speakers. The Cherokee Nation now sponsors immersion schools.