cherokee language

The Cherokee language

An endangered language

What is Cherokee ?

Cherokee is a severly endangered Native American language spoken by the Cherokee people. There are approximately only 2,000 fluent first language Cherokee speakers remaining in the world and the number is declining every year. The number is infact declining every year : -In 1960, a survey was done, it showed that 16 000 people identified themselves as fluent cherokee speakers. -In 2000, another survey was done, and 10 000 people identified themselves as fluent cherokee speakers -In 2018 was done the latest survey and this time, only (approaximatively) 2 100 people stated to be fluent cherokee speakers.

Cherokee syllabary

Where is Cherokee spoken ?

The Cherokee language was traditionally spoken in the present day southern Appalachian region of North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia and Alabama. The Eastern and Western dialects of Cherokee compose the southern branch of the Iroquoian language family*.

Who speaks it ? It is mostly spoken by federaaly recognized tribes, these being : Cherokee Nation, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

*The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America

More about Cherokee : Syllabary

Contrary to other language, Cherokee uses a Syllabary instead of an alphabet.

A syllabary is when sounds represents syllabs, whereas an alphabet is when symbols represents sound.

Cherokee's syllabary was created by Sequoyah, also known under the name of George Guess, a goldsmith born around 1770 and dead in 1843.

+ info

Application presentation

To fight against the vanish of this endangered language, I created a project of an application : CherokeeChat.

What is it ?

This app goal is to make people learn cherokee in a chatting way with Artificial Intelligence (A.I)

How does it works ?

When you open the Mobile App, You get to choose between differents bots, which level of Cherokee they teach gets from easier to more complex. The bot teaches you the language in multiple ways.

CherokeeChat in-app view

In this example, Nayrb, the bot for beginners do a pronounciation exercice.

CherokeeChat in-app view

Then, it can also asks you to give the right translation of words they had told you about earlier.

CherokeeChat in-app view

Another good point of the app is that when you got a question because you didn't fully understood something or you're just curious, you can directly asks it to the Artificial intellingence.

The bot can also talk, to know how is a word pronounced right.

The app is made in a chat way because, in this format, it gets very interactive and it is more familiar to younger generation

Thanks!