The local tribe nation has a Facebook page associated with cultural education, which is interesting to follow. Learning these words won't help you, I imagine; almost nobody speaks Cherokee even here. However, it does provide an interesting opportunity to learn something about their writing system. Cherokee has a syllabary rather than an alphabet. It was developed by Sequoyah in the very early 19th century. You'll see it on road signs around here, especially near the Cherokee boundary lands.
At first it looks very strange because there are around half of the expected number of characters to represent a word. This is because each character represents both consonant and vowel sounds. Thus, "August" is reduced from six characters to three; "Blackberry" from ten to three. This happens even though the word for "August" has more syllables than the word "August" itself: it's just one character for each syllable.
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Many long years ago I had a job interview in Erwin, Tennessee, in the eastern mountains. Smokies, right? The nurse who dealt with me was of Indian/Cherokee? descent. At least half, I'd guess.
My mother's brothers married women who were 1/8 Indian. As they were in Oklahoma, I wonder how much of their descent was Cherokee.
Which reminds me of my childhood reaction to Westerns---movies or TV shows. They depicted Cowboys fighting Indians. As my family had Cowboys and Indians marrying each other, I never thought much of Westerns.
Which is why I wasn't that attached to Blazing Saddles. Satire works best on what you love. As I never liked Westerns, my reaction to Blazing Saddles was indifference----so what else is new?
Ditto John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, which depicted Okies going to California and staying poor and oppressed. My Okie relatives who made the California trip found California to be the Garden of Eden.
Gringo
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