This is where I post essays I've written about Cherokee language topics. These documents are meant to be read like chapters in a book, as opposed to study-guide or handout documents meant to be repeatedly studied. When I reach a point in my learning where I feel I can explain a topic sufficiently to make a lesson out of it, I review the topic by writing an essay about it. I write them as if I were presenting the material to a class, like a lecture. If you find anything in any of these writings that is incorrect, please leave a comment (or send me an email) to let me know! I'm looking for any opportunities I can find to help sharpen the information provided here.
Please Remember: I am not a fluent speaker, I am not a certified instructor, I am not an academic linguist or language education specialist, and I am not Cherokee. All the writings here are the product of my own language learning process, and may contain mistakes. None of this is original research, and I should never be cited (in the academic sense) for the information contained in these writings. Feel free to print, distribute, repost, or share anything posted here.
Learning Cherokee Language: What to Expect
This essay is meant to provide a little encouragement to new learners and help set expectations of what the learning process is like.
You need to understand this point as soon as possible: you cannot become a competent Cherokee speaker if you study it with an “English-first” approach. It just won’t work. . .
Basic Linguistic Concepts for Cherokee Language Students
This essay is meant to provide an extremely beginner-level introduction to concepts from the field of Linguistics that should be helpful to English-speaking students of Cherokee language. Even just a little Linguistic context can help you get a better big-picture idea of the differences between Cherokee and English, which in turn can help you articulate yourself better when you are struggling to understand something about Cherokee.
Learning Cherokee can be uniquely frustrating, because when students get confused, they often struggle to understand what it is that’s confusing them in the first place. Students often feel completely unable to articulate their confusion, or ask the kind of useful questions that will actually clarify that confusion. This kind of frustration, in my opinion, is greatly reduced by just a smidge of context from the field of Linguistics. . .
The Cherokee Verb and its Segments
This essay is my best shot at an introduction to Cherokee verbs and how they are formed. My goal was to provide a bird's-eye-view of the topic and hit all the major points for beginning learners--to help you get your foot in the door of the all-important topic of Cherokee verb conjugation. If you're a complete beginner, you should read and digest the essay on Basic Linguistic Concepts before tackling this one.
Like many Polysynthetic languages, Cherokee could be described as “verb-driven.” The verb-conjugation system of Cherokee is probably the single most complicated topic to be tackled in your learning process. Verbs are the “MVPs” of most Cherokee sentences . . .
Introduction to Cherokee Stem Forms: Incompletive, Completive, Immediate, and Infinitive
This essay is meant to provide a basic overview of Cherokee Stem Forms, which lay the foundation for Cherokee tenses.
By now you’ve probably heard terms like “Incompletive,” or “Completive.” Some sources call these categories “Aspects.” Some use the terms without ever explaining what they are or what they mean. But basically every source addresses these categories using the same five labels—“Present Continuous,” “Incompletive,” “Completive,” “Immediate,” and “Infinitive.” But what are they? . . .