LCTL of the Month: Cherokee

What do the iPhone and a printing press have in common? More than might be imagined at first glance. Both represent a change in the way information is produced, distributed and consumed. Both are seen as opportunities for speakers of endangered languages to preserve and maintain their linguistic identities.

In 2007, Chief Chad Smith brought a group of young students to the bosses at Apple. It was a long shot, but last year, Apple contacted the tribe and told them that they had added Cherokee language support to the operating system that runs the iPhone, as well as the Macintosh. Support for the iPad will be implemented later this year. Now students in the tribe's total immersion school are able to practice their language skills as they text and use a computer.

I hope Chief Chad Smith's plan works. It is part of a tradition of innovation and adaptation that has kept the Cherokee language from falling silent thus far. This event echos a similar visit, made by another man with a vision and a small child. The story begins, as retold in an 1820 letter to the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper, with a silversmith named Sequoya in front of a group of Cherokee elders, demonstrating his new invention.

First, he asked an elder to give a speech while he made marks on a piece of paper. Even after Sequoya recited the entire speech, word-for-word, the elders weren't impressed. Some hecklers accused him of using the marks as mere memory aides, useless to anyone who hadn't heard the original speech.

With what I suggest may have been a touch of showmanship, the silversmith called his young daughter into the room. He handed her the paper and she magically brought the elder's speech to life again. Not from memory, but from across the boundaries of time. Sequoya had found a way to fix words in a permanent form so they could be preserved forever.

Now that's what I call a great magic trick.  Why don't we see how it was done?

First off, we have to clear up a terminology problem before we get into particulars about how Cherokee is written down. The system of symbols developed by Sequoya is not technically an alphabet but a syllabary. What difference does it make? Merely in the number of symbols.

While an alphabet has each symbol represent a single language-sound, or phoneme, each symbol in a syllabary represents a whole syllable. Let's compare them side by side:

Hello [H-E-L-L-O]

ᎣᏏᏲ [O]-[SI]-[YO]

On the left we have an English word written in an alphabet. It has one syllable, four sounds and is written with five symbols (the extra L is there to indicate that the E represents its short sound [ɛ] rather than its long sound [i]). On the right there is a three syllable Cherokee word with five sounds. Notice that it is written with only three symbols. Syllabary writing systems are fairly common, and anyone who has studied Japanese should recognize this as the same principal behind hiragana and katakana writing.

In the end, it rarely matters which system one chooses to write a language is (Spanish has been written in Hebrew characters and Arabic script) as long as the conventions are consistent and most of the language's sounds are represented. A syllabary uses fewer symbols for each word, but requires a unique symbol for each combination of vowels and consonants (Cherokee has 85 “letters” to English's 26).

Before discussing the specific way that the Cherokee syllabary is arranged, it is worth discovering how the sounds of Cherokee are arranged. If you recall from our discussion of Sanskrit, the sounds a language uses to make words can be arranged into organized systems of contrasting vocal movements. For instance, in English, the S-sound and the Z-sound are distinguished by whether or nor the speaker allows their vocal chords to vibrate. (Go ahead, try it- alternate saying “ssssss” with “zzzzz” while holding your hand on your throat. You should be able to feel a buzzing sensation turn on and off).

From the point of view of English, Cherokee is not so exotic as other languages. It only has six vowels (A, E, I, O, U, V), and only the V-vowel needs explanation. It is called (in fancy-linguist speak) a nasalized central mid vowel, but what you want to know is that it is pronounced like the first or third “A” in “banana” but with a nasal vibration typical of French or New Jersey stereotypes.

You can also hear all the sounds of the syllabary being pronounced by Anna Huckabee, Language Coordinator of the Culture Resource Center of the Cherokee Nation.

If we take a closer look at Sequoya's work, we can see it as a grid, dividing the possible vowel-consonant combinations between the six vowels (a,e,i,o,v) and 12-ish consonants. You'll notice that there are a few empty spots and a few extra symbols here and there, but that's just because orthographies are invented to fit languages, not the other way around.

a	e	i	o	u	v
Ꭰ a	Ꭱ e	Ꭲ i	Ꭳ o	Ꭴ u	Ꭵ v
Ꭶ ga Ꭷ ka	Ꭸ ge	Ꭹ gi	Ꭺ go	Ꭻ gu	Ꭼ gv
Ꭽ ha	Ꭾ he	Ꭿ hi	Ꮀ ho	Ꮁ hu	Ꮂ hv
Ꮃ la	Ꮄ le	Ꮅ li	Ꮆ lo	Ꮇ lu	Ꮈ lv
Ꮉ ma	Ꮊ me	Ꮋ mi	Ꮌ mo	Ꮍ mu
Ꮎ na, Ꮐ nah, Ꮏ hna	Ꮑ ne	Ꮒ ni	Ꮓ no	Ꮔ nu	Ꮕ nv
Ꮖ qua	Ꮗ que	Ꮘ qui	Ꮙ quo	Ꮚ quu	Ꮛ quv
Ꮝ s Ꮜ sa	Ꮞ se	Ꮟ si	Ꮠ so	Ꮡ su	Ꮢ sv
Ꮣ da Ꮤ ta	Ꮥ de Ꮦ te	Ꮧ di Ꮨ ti	Ꮩ do	Ꮪ du	Ꮫ dv
Ꮬ dla Ꮭ tla	Ꮮ tle	Ꮯ tli	Ꮰ tlo	Ꮱ tlu	Ꮲ tlv
Ꮳ tsa	Ꮴ tse	Ꮵ tsi	Ꮶ tso	Ꮷ tsu	Ꮸ tsv
Ꮹ wa	Ꮺ we	Ꮻ wi	Ꮼ wo	Ꮽ wu	Ꮾ wv
Ꮿ ya	Ᏸ ye	Ᏹ yi	Ᏺ yo	Ᏻ yu	Ᏼ yv

Haven given the sounds of his language a printable form, Seqoyah could then exploit the other great information technology of the day- the printing press. The Cherokee Phoenix started publishing the news in English and in Cherokee in 1828. The syllabary was also used to write the Tribal Constitution.

Despite winning the right to stay in the Supreme Court, the Andrew Jackson administration forcibly relocated the Cherokees west of the Mississippi River in what certainly would have been called ethnic cleansing (at least) had our 24 hour news cycle existed back then. Even out in Oklahoma, however, the presses didn't stop. More newspapers, the Cherokee Advocate and the Cherokee Messenger, joined the Phoenix.

Although most of these newspapers have ceased to be published regularly, the syllabary has never fallen into disuse. In 1999 Cherokee symbols were added to Unicode 3.0 and the internet has opened new opportunities. The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma offers online language classes and numerous internet message boards exist to foster the use of the language.

Cherokee is the last surviving Southern Iroquoian language. The number of speakers varies from count to count and news item to news item, but is no larger than sixteen thousand-- a small minority of the overall Cherokee population. By the count of the Ethnologue, only about twenty percent can read Sequoya's characters. 

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The above has been another delivery from Schendo's LCTL of the Month Club.  Many thanks go out to the librarians at Western Carolina University, who have digitized the first three volumes of the Cherokee Phoenix. The photo of the printing press came from Takomabibelot.  The poor photoshop job is no one's fault but my own....