Cherokee language
- noun
- /ˈtʃɛrəki ˈlæŋɡwɪdʒ/
:
idioma cherokee
- The Cherokee language has a rich history and is an important aspect of the Cherokee identity.
Examples
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He taught his students how to read and write in the Cherokee language during the course.
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Thus, paradoxically, in the Cherokee language at least, the act of confessing one's sins becomes the expression of one's faith.
Academic text (1995) -
While the Cherokee language is still spoken and written by thousands of individuals, the Cherokee plant names found in the references were spelled phonetically in the English language.
Academic text (2011) -
The asylum, because of its bilingual staff and its large number of Cherokee-speaking children, employed the Cherokee language with fewer obstacles and less resistance than either the common schools or the seminaries.
Academic text (2010) -
By 1820, they had developed a national constitution, instituted a democratic government, established community schools and churches, and developed a syllabary in which the Cherokee language could be used in publishing their own newspapers.
Academic text (1990) -
The Cherokee linguist Sequoyah developed the Cherokee syllabary in the early 1820s, making it possible to write in the Cherokee language.
Academic text (2011) -
Those termed "full-bloods," usually as a result of command of the Cherokee language, often felt discriminated against in the public schools and even more so in the seminaries, which made few concessions for students who spoke Cherokee as a first language.
Academic text (2010) -
Many children in the community are learning the Cherokee language to keep their culture alive.
Synonyms
A language spoken by a Native American people from the southeastern United States
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is fully compositional: combining the proper noun 'Cherokee' (the people/name) with 'language' yields 'the language of the Cherokee people.' There is no idiomatic or metaphorical shift and the pattern (ethnonym + language) is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both words will understand it.
Etymology
Cherokee language is named after the Cherokee people: Cherokee are the people and language means 'the way they speak'. In the early 1800s a Cherokee man, Sequoyah, made a set of special writing signs where each sign stands for a sound, so the name reminds us that this is the Cherokee people's own way to speak and write.
