Native Languages of the Americas: Cherokee (Tsalagi) Language:
Cherokee--more properly spelled Tsalagi--is an Iroquoian
language with an innovative written syllabary invented by a
Cherokee scholar. 22,000 people speak Tsalagi today, primarily
in Oklahoma and North Carolina. Though it is one of the
healthier Indian languages of North America and the one in which
the most literature being published, Tsalagi is still in
imperiled condition because of government policies as late as
the fifties which enforced the removal of Cherokee children from
Tsalagi-speaking homes, reducing the number of young Cherokees
being raised bilingually from 75% to less than 5% today. People:
'Cherokee' is Creek for 'people with another language'. (It's
amazing how white settlers always managed to learn another
tribe's name for any group of Indians. They learned the Creek
word for the Cherokee tribe, but not the Creek word for
themselves.) Anyway, our original name for ourselves was
Aniyunwiya, but Cherokee is fine too (though we say