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Cherokee Reference Grammar
The Cherokees have the oldest and best-known Native American writing system in the United States. Invented by Sequoyah and made public in 1821, it was rapidly adopted, leading to nineteenth-century Cherokee literacy rates as high as 90 percent. This writing system, the Cherokee syllabary, is fully explained and used throughout this volume, the first and only complete published grammar of the Cherokee language.
Although the Cherokee Reference Grammar focuses on the dialect spoken by the Cherokees in Oklahoma—the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians—it provides the grammatical foundation upon which all the dialects are based. In his introduction, author Brad Montgomery-Anderson offers a brief account of Cherokee history and language revitalization initiatives, as well as instructions for using this grammar. The book then delves into an explanation of Cherokee pronunciation, orthography, parts of speech, and syntax.
While the book is intended as a reference grammar for experienced scholars, Montgomery-Anderson presents the information in accessible stages, moving from easier examples to more complex linguistic structures. Examples are taken from a variety of sources, including many from the Cherokee Phoenix . Audio clips of various text examples throughout can be found on the accompanying CDs. The volume also includes three a glossary keyed to the text; a typescript for the audio component; and a collection of literary two traditional stories and a historical account of a search party traveling up the Arkansas River.
The Cherokee Nation, as the second-largest tribe in the United States and the largest in Oklahoma, along with the United Keetoowah Band and the Eastern band of Cherokees, have a large number of people who speak their native language. Like other tribes, they have seen a sharp decline in the number of native speakers, particularly among the young, but they have responded with ambitious programs for preserving and revitalizing Cherokee culture and language. Cherokee Reference Grammar will serve as a vital resource in advancing these efforts to understand Cherokee history, language, and culture on their own terms.
Although the Cherokee Reference Grammar focuses on the dialect spoken by the Cherokees in Oklahoma—the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians—it provides the grammatical foundation upon which all the dialects are based. In his introduction, author Brad Montgomery-Anderson offers a brief account of Cherokee history and language revitalization initiatives, as well as instructions for using this grammar. The book then delves into an explanation of Cherokee pronunciation, orthography, parts of speech, and syntax.
While the book is intended as a reference grammar for experienced scholars, Montgomery-Anderson presents the information in accessible stages, moving from easier examples to more complex linguistic structures. Examples are taken from a variety of sources, including many from the Cherokee Phoenix . Audio clips of various text examples throughout can be found on the accompanying CDs. The volume also includes three a glossary keyed to the text; a typescript for the audio component; and a collection of literary two traditional stories and a historical account of a search party traveling up the Arkansas River.
The Cherokee Nation, as the second-largest tribe in the United States and the largest in Oklahoma, along with the United Keetoowah Band and the Eastern band of Cherokees, have a large number of people who speak their native language. Like other tribes, they have seen a sharp decline in the number of native speakers, particularly among the young, but they have responded with ambitious programs for preserving and revitalizing Cherokee culture and language. Cherokee Reference Grammar will serve as a vital resource in advancing these efforts to understand Cherokee history, language, and culture on their own terms.
536 pages, Paperback
First published June 4, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 7, 2023
I love this book. It’s not free from errors and it could have expounded on some things, but it’s by far the most useful and comprehensive single resource I’ve encountered trying to learn Cherokee.
June 9, 2023
I have a few gripes with some of Brad Montgomery-Anderson's explanations of certain topics. Sometimes his approaches to breaking down verbs are to me a little counter-intuitive, and some of his explanations were a little unclear. But it is probably overall the most thorough exploration of Cherokee grammar to date, and provides useful vocabulary for many of the more complicated aspects of Cherokee grammar.
October 7, 2020
approachable as a linguistic text
October 5, 2016
While the syllabary is a meaningful symbol of cultural nationalism within the Cherokee "diaspora," and is popular for tattoos, its creator, Sequoyah, did not intend for people to learn it outside of an organic Cherokee-speaking community. The syllabary does not specify word tonality, nor the famous "intrusive h" which pushes itself before sounds like "na-" and "la-" to create sounds and expressions completely outside of the range of the Latin vocabulary. However, there are similarities between expressions like "tla," the Cherokee word for "no," and the Meso-American formulations like "aguacatl" (avocado) and "chocolatl."
While we can debate about all of the political issues directly connected (necessarily) to the issue of "organic," "community," and other terms, I am tempted to take the idealistic view that it is possible to mathematically imagine an optimal outcome for language learning. If you think of the "signal" as the music of the language as given to the people, and the "noise" as the loss of tone, cadence, and perhaps musicality at the hands of assimilation policies, you can begin to apply a statistical model to the development of the language outside of its official jurisdiction. There are scholars of Cherokee in Japan, for instance, which is noted in Montgomery-Anderson's great bibliography at the end of the text. There are scholars of the "Iroquois" or Haudenosaunee cultures around the world, because in many ways the Haudenosaunee symbol systems have as great an influence on Canada, France, and England as they do on the United States.
The most important message that Montgomery-Anderson's book sends, even if the author himself would dispute it, is that it is okay to be proud of your heritage, no matter how much you may hear that is shameful or disreputable about yourself. As the climates of and other forms of self-destructiveness change, it becomes more and more important to take claim of one's own heritage, regardless of the seemingly endless political and economic ramifications. For example, Laotian Americans will not be Laotian in the same sense when they teach their children to use English only. If you don't speak your language, how can you prove your ancestry? According to David Treuer, Indians use social media about four times as often as non-Indians. There is a great appreciation of storytelling in many First Nations, and part of the story is the musicality of the language and the way it makes you see the world.
Certain words in Cherokee, as in every other language, seem to actually SOUND like what they ARE, and learning, hearing, or even seeing them makes one feel a deeper connection to the meaning. For example, the word for God is one of the most impossible to type in the Latin/English alphabet, because it contains an aspirated L, which I first heard on a YouTube video by a blogger and teacher named "Tsasuyed" (she pronounces it za-zu-yed, with emphasis on the last syllable). There is something, certainly, ineffable about the word for God, because of the way speakers must touch the roofs of their mouths with their tongues, completely isolating the air within the cavern, in order to pronounce the "h."
While we can debate about all of the political issues directly connected (necessarily) to the issue of "organic," "community," and other terms, I am tempted to take the idealistic view that it is possible to mathematically imagine an optimal outcome for language learning. If you think of the "signal" as the music of the language as given to the people, and the "noise" as the loss of tone, cadence, and perhaps musicality at the hands of assimilation policies, you can begin to apply a statistical model to the development of the language outside of its official jurisdiction. There are scholars of Cherokee in Japan, for instance, which is noted in Montgomery-Anderson's great bibliography at the end of the text. There are scholars of the "Iroquois" or Haudenosaunee cultures around the world, because in many ways the Haudenosaunee symbol systems have as great an influence on Canada, France, and England as they do on the United States.
The most important message that Montgomery-Anderson's book sends, even if the author himself would dispute it, is that it is okay to be proud of your heritage, no matter how much you may hear that is shameful or disreputable about yourself. As the climates of and other forms of self-destructiveness change, it becomes more and more important to take claim of one's own heritage, regardless of the seemingly endless political and economic ramifications. For example, Laotian Americans will not be Laotian in the same sense when they teach their children to use English only. If you don't speak your language, how can you prove your ancestry? According to David Treuer, Indians use social media about four times as often as non-Indians. There is a great appreciation of storytelling in many First Nations, and part of the story is the musicality of the language and the way it makes you see the world.
Certain words in Cherokee, as in every other language, seem to actually SOUND like what they ARE, and learning, hearing, or even seeing them makes one feel a deeper connection to the meaning. For example, the word for God is one of the most impossible to type in the Latin/English alphabet, because it contains an aspirated L, which I first heard on a YouTube video by a blogger and teacher named "Tsasuyed" (she pronounces it za-zu-yed, with emphasis on the last syllable). There is something, certainly, ineffable about the word for God, because of the way speakers must touch the roofs of their mouths with their tongues, completely isolating the air within the cavern, in order to pronounce the "h."
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews