
The Syllabary was designed by a fluent Cherokee, Sequoyah, speaker to be used by other fluent speakers. It isn’t easy for non-fluent speakers to pick up a book and read, understanding the differences. Therefore, in these lessons I include Syllabary, Romanized and a Linguistic system.
Neither the Syllabary nor the Romanized show the differences in pronunciation for syllables that can have multiple sounds, vowel length, tones, deleted/silent vowels, glottal stops, or aspirated/intrusive h. Without these differences shown to you, an experienced speaker, you may not be saying what you are intending.
For example:
ᎪᏪᎵᎠ / gowelia / goo(h)weélíʔa – he is writing.
ᎪᏪᎵᎠ / gowelia / goòweélíʔa – I am writing.
Notice the changes between the Syllabary, Romanized, and linguistic forms. There is no distinction for the vowel length, tone, glottal stop, nor the aspiration. However, there is a difference in the meaning of the word. For some speakers these distinctions are intentional, for some it is a manner of context, but for new learners and those not immersed in the language, well they have to develop these habits.
The first thing to understand is each syllable can be technically pronounced eight different ways, some are more so, depending on vowel length and tone. In those syllables that have more than eight, it is because their sounds can be altered (d/t, g/k, ts/j/ch).
As I have seen it stated in multiple resources: in English, a verb can change depending on the tense. Sing in the present tense in different then sang in the past tense and sung in the past participle tense. We will discuss the major change that occurs in words (affixes) that changes a verb or makes a noun later. But, I do want to point out that a common change is when the intrusive/aspirated h moves around a word:
ᎪᎵᎦ / goliga / kooliika – I understand it
ᎪᎵᎦ / goliga / ko(h)l(i)ka – he understands it.
Again, notice the changes are not seen in either the Syllabary nor the Romanized writing.
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ts – (j – ) prepronominal prefix
Set A First Person Pronominal Prefix
Set A Second and Third Person Pronominal Prefix
Set B First Person Pronominal Prefix
Set B Second and Third Person Pronominal Prefix
Common Person Pronominal Prefix
Complete List of Set A Person Pronoun Prefix