Cherokee · ᏣᎳᎩ

About Cherokee

Language family

Iroquoian (Southern Iroquoian branch)

Where it's spoken

Cherokee Nation (Oklahoma) and the Eastern Band (North Carolina)

Speakers

a critically endangered language with only a few thousand fluent speakers left

Cherokee is distantly related to the northern Iroquoian languages of the Great Lakes region, though centuries of separation make them mutually unintelligible today. It is famous for its syllabary, invented single-handedly by Sequoyah in the 1820s — one of the few times in history an individual outside an existing literate tradition created a complete, working writing system. Because fluent elders are aging, tribal immersion schools are now central to keeping the language alive.