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Cherokee grammar is like English grammar in some ways. In other ways it's very different. Both English and Cherokee have grammatical elements called morphemes. English speakers know some of these as parts of speech--that is nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. English also has particles like plural s and ing that we add to words modify their meaning: cat + s = cats, catch + ing = catching. This means that English cats is made up of two morphemes: the noun root cat 'cat' and the plural suffix s. But this doesn't mean that every time an English speakers write c-a-t, it's a noun root. In catsup, c-a-t isn't a separate morpheme; it's part of the noun root. In catch, it's part of a verb root. Cherokee has three morpheme types:
Just like in English, Cherokee particles can be added to noun roots. For example, the suffix ya 'principal,real,widely spread' can be added to yv-wi 'person' to make vy-wi-ya 'Indian, Native American'. It can also be added to tsi-s-kwa 'bird' to make tsi-s-kwa-ya 'sparrow.' But this doesn't mean that every time a word ends in y-a it contains the morpheme ya 'principal, real, wide spread'. The word wa-ya 'wolf' is only one morpheme, just like the English word catsup. Particles can also be added to verb roots. The particle dsi 'I' can be added to ne-ga 'speak' to create dsi-ne-ga 'I speak'. When it is added to tsa-la-gi it changes its sound a little and becomes tsi. Tsi-tsa-la-gi means 'I am Cherokee.' This is exactly what happens in English when a word like dog becomes plural. In dogs, even though we write s, we say z.. Cherokee does not have as many parts of speech as English, but Cherokee speakers can combine grammatical elements to create words that function as sentences. This means Cherokee words can be very complex. For example, an 1852 grammar documents the Cherokee word wi-ni-to-ge-na-li-sko-lv-ta-no-ne-li-ti-se-sti which means they will have at that time somewhat ceased to favor you and me from afar.' We've worked hard to design grammar lessons that make learning Cherokee as easy as possible. The lessons are also designed so that you will learn new Cherokee roots and particles as you are learning how to combined these into Cherokee words. We hope you will use the e-mail boxes to let us know what parts of the lessons you helpful and what parts we need to improve to make learning easier and more fun!. Robin Sabino and Distance Learning Technical Support Footnotes : |
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