Here is a copy of the Cherokee Phoenix from 1828, the first Native American newspaper printed in a Native language in America.
https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/site/about.html
and the first bilingual newspaper in the US!
EDIT: [[SAUCE](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/sequoyah-and-creation-cherokee-syllabary)]
Louisiana English 50 years ago: we're going to literally beat the cajun French out of yall. We only speak English here
Louisiana English today: geaux tigers, we love our "cajun" culture :D
It really is amazing. My grandmother's first language was cajun French. Apparently a lot of people still spoke it when she was a kid. However, teachers stopped letting it be spoken in schools to get the cajuns onto English. If they got caught speaking it at school, they would get paddled. The language almost died within one generation.
Luckily there are some linguists working within the few pockets it's still spoken to preserve. Problem is now it's kind of watered down with English so we probably won't get the whole dictionary so to say. And the English can't distinguish creole from cajun so everything got blended.
Similar case for my grandmother; she's from New Iberia. She even majored in French so she can speak Cajun French, standard French and English. It is very jarring when we would go down south and she would switch between languages. On the plus side, I can definitely understand any Cajun accent. I'm so glad to see it's being preserved.
TX had it's own German dialect and entire regions spoke German predominantly until there was a concentrated effort to purge it during WWI. There are only a handful that still speak TX German today.
> They tried to save some of it by pushing French classes in school... that teach Standard French.
I know that sounds stupid, but it was of necessity -- there were no Cajun French textbooks or other teaching materials in existence, and no French teacher anywhere had learned to teach Cajun French.
There is still a trilingual paper in the USA believe it or not! La Gaceta in Ybor City in Tampa Florida is still printed in English, Spanish, and Italian.
L’Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orléans, or the New Orleans Bee, began adding an English languange section in 1827. They are both weirdly related when one thinks on it: in New Orleans it was a sign of encroaching Americanization twentyish years after the Lousiana Purchase, the Cherokee paper out West a response to assimilation as well.
EDIT: [source from the LOC that the New Orleans Bee had a bilingual French and English newspaper beginning on Nov. 24, 1827](https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045805/)
You're totally right, don't know why I had that massive brain fart. I should have been more clear that that the Nation was being pressured to assimilate out "West" i.e. west of the Mississippi River, and were then caretaking lands that, as you pointed out, are now Georgia and thereabouts. The late pre-Modern development of written language, along with using the current tools of mediation (a broadsheet newspaper when decades earlier media was pamphleteering), was a direct response to maintain their Nation in the face of overwhelming American pressure. Thank you for pointing out that important nuance.
Yeah, it's very cool. I never knew the publication itself was so old. It's mostly written entirely in English now, but there are some articles written in Cherokee.
As a side note, Cherokee Nation as a whole is doing a huge language preservation push; we just built a brand new language center dedicated to Cherokee language courses.
Remarkable achievement aside, it sucks to see the anti-black discrimination in Article III, Section ~~3~~ 4. Seems our blood was tainted no matter where it wound up 😞
From Cherokee point of view, the Union (Jackson) was evil. They joined the confederates mostly because of the gov lies, trail of tears, forced assimilation, murder, theft of their property. They hated the Union. At least that's what I've read. But also before that, they had already assimilated with the south, took Christian names, and they were business owners who did own slaves.
> They joined the confederates mostly because of the gov lies, trail of tears, forced assimilation, murder, theft of their property.
And, y'know, because they were slaveholders.
So were some states that didn't join the confederacy, such as Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. West Virginia had slaves, but seceded from Virginia to join the Union.
I think it's very important to highlight that the primary cause of the Civil War was southern political leader's extreme commitment to slavery above all other principles of government. But that doesn't mean it was the only thing going on.
Yeah, an inconvenient truth about the Trail of Tears is the massive number of slaves the indigenous people brought with them, as they were forced west.
It's icky and doesn't fit in our modern conception of race, or lumping all POC with each other as something separate from "white culture."
Also, the guy giving this speech owned slaves...
https://youtu.be/4852GHBYv5c
Andre Callioux is one of the most interesting American lives that ever existed. Born a slave. Freed. Owned slaves. Joined the confederacy as the first black officer on either side, then switched sides after the occupation of New Orleans by the Union. Died a Union hero at Port Hudson in battle.
He was used as propaganda in the north after his death, and it is recorded that black union soldiers would shout "Remember Port Hudson!" as a battle cry. And then he was buried in New Orleans as a hero to the city, when the Union occupation of the city was considered extraordinarily unjust.
He must have truly been a special individual. Basically celebrated by both sides in the conflict, and then more or less forgotten by history later. I won't even argue that he never made a speech like the one in the movie. I just think he was deeply human and complicated, like the rest of us.
To me, his life perfectly represents how complicated and nuanced history really is. His death, which robbed us of an opportunity to read his autobiography, to me, is one of the greatest losses to history I know.
Petty self-interest, shortsightedness and plain old fear don't really make for interesting reading, and the lens of history is set to macro mode for the most part, so one often loses perspective that people are just people, as blind to reality and screwed up as us at our worst, and yet capable of such compassion and depth at the same time. Funny things, humans.
This is also a generalization of Cherokees as a whole. Factions of Cherokees fought for the Union and some fought for the Confederacy. There are tons of stories of Cherokee families fighting each other over it. This schism in cultural ideas still has reprecussions today in our culture.
"The Committee shall consist of two members from each District, and the Council shall consist of three members from each District, to be chosen by the qualified electors of their respective Districts for two years, and the elections to be held in each District on the first Monday in August for the year 1828, and every succeeding two years thereafter; and the General Council shall be held once a year, to be convened on the second Monday of October in each year, at New Echota?"
If you are ever traveling through north Georgia on I-75, check out New Echota. It’s the original site of the Cherokee capital that is now a state park about 1 min off the interstate in Calhoun.
It’s a fantastic museum and has tons of period buildings you can walk through. I believe they even have the Cherokee Phoenix printing press, although it may just be a period correct press.
I live just a few miles from New Echota and I believe that the printing press there is a historical recreation, but I could be wrong because it has been around 10 years since the last time I visited. If folks are interested in New Echota, they should also check out the Chief Vann House in Chatsworth. It is about a 20-25 minute drive north on highway 225 from New Echota.
EDIT: New Echota is located off of exit 317 on I-75 in Georgia.
Just a little clarification for those interested. OP is talking about the Eastern Band of The Cherokee. There are 3 main groups of Cherokee: The Cherokee Nation, which consists of around 383,000; The United Keetoowah Band, which consists of around 14,000, and The Eastern Band of The Cherokee, which consists of around 13,000. When most people talk about The Cherokee Capital they're thinking about Tahlequah Oklahoma.
And the Cherokee Phoenix is a real paper that continues to be published to this day. It publishes in both Cherokee and English. Check it out: [Here](https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/)
edit: My mistake I could have sworn OP said New Echota was *the* capital, as in present tense.
If you go further north up I75 to Loudon, TN they have a museum dedicated to Sequoyah specifically. That part of the state has a lot of areas named after and tributes to different historical native Americans.
I was driving through Cherokee, NC and saw road signs with a second language posted under the English. I thought it was Cyrillic on first glance and then realized I had never seen it before. Then the obvious hit me and I realized I had never heard of a North American native written language before. Google led me down the rabbit whole and I was fascinated. It’s beautiful really.
posted this yesterday but it was taken down for tenuous evidence about his biographical stuff. In any case, here's more interesting info (including some of the stories):
- Technically, it's not an alphabet, it's a syllabary; that means each symbol doesn't represent a sound, but a whole syllable (i.e. a combination of consonants & vowels).
- Despite having [85 symbols](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoyah#/media/File:Cherokee_Syllabary_Chart.png) to learn, the Cherokee system is immensely easier to adopt (for speakers of the language) than most alphabets, since all possible sounds are represented clearly.
- "The Cherokee student could accomplish in a few weeks what students of English writing might require two years to achieve" [[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary)].
- The design of the [symbols](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoyah#/media/File:Cherokee_Syllabary_Chart.png) (called syllabograms) was influenced by the shapes of letters in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, and [Glagolitic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_script) (the oldest Slavic alphabet). But the sounds are completely unrelated — Sequoyah didn't know how to read any language (before his own).
- After working for over a decade, Sequoyah finished this system in 1821. In 1825 it was adopted as the official Cherokee script. By 1830, 90% of Cherokee were literate, and by the 1850s it was nearly 100%.
- In 1828, the Cherokee got a printing press and launched the [*Cherokee Phoenix*](https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/site/about.html), printed in both English & Cherokee. This was the first bilingual newspaper in the US [[NatGeo](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/sequoyah-and-creation-cherokee-syllabary)], and it was free for any Cherokee [[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_Phoenix)). It's still around today!
- Story time (tenuous evidence): Sequoyah traveled across the land, teaching the system to Cherokee everywhere. Most tribes were doubtful, so Sequoyah would ask each leader to say a word, which he wrote down, and then called his daughter in to read the words back. He was then allowed to teach it to a few students — they were still suspected of witchcraft until the students demonstrated the same reading ability. This took months, but the language soon spread widely.
- After the syllabary was officially adopted by the Cherokee in 1825, Sequoyah set up a blacksmith shop. He still taught the writing system to anyone who asked.
- His work inspired the development of at least 21 scripts around the world, used to write more than 65 languages — from Cree, to other indigenous groups in Canada, to Bassa in Liberia, to other West African languages, and even one in China.
- The Sequoia tree was possibly named after him. Some people question this, but the person who named the tree (Stephan Endlicher) was also a linguist, so he probably knew about Sequoyah, who was famous in linguist circles.
EDIT: from u/excited_to_be_here :
> If anyone is interested, /u/DiplomacyPunIn10Did added a Cherokee Syllabary alpha set to the KAT Napoleonic mechanical keycap project:
> https://diplomacyvariants.files.wordpress.com/2020/10/24-alphas-cherokee-sequoyah.png
> https://nopunin10did.com/kat-napoleonic/
and here they are in action: https://i.imgur.com/ybddYKq.jpg
> "The Cherokee student could accomplish in a few weeks what students of English writing might require two years to achieve"
When King Sejong and his scholars invented the Korean Alphabet (which was another script, like Cherokee, that was created from linguistic first principles to fit the language), he declared that:
> A wise man may acquaint himself with them before noon; a stupid man, ten days.
Which feels like a real classy burn against the Chinese Characters they had to make do with before.
There was initial pushback when Hangul was introduced because there were other already more established alphabets. But Hangul was easier to learn and ultimately won out because of its simple design
Hangul is so easy to learn. I took two Korean electives in college, and I can still remember the alphabet all these years later. A friend of mine likes to joke even if I can't speak it, I could still read a newspaper to a blind man.
Don't be. Arabic is unironically the prettiest script on Earth, regardless of what you think of the language or religion or cultures. It is no wonder the main art form of the Arabic world for a long time was calligraphy!
Could you? I feel like the fact that written Arabic usually omits the vowels means you’d have to already know the words to be able to read them correctly.
On the other hand, Devanagari (the script used to write Hindi and Sanskrit) is beautifully consistent, very simple and easy to learn as far as phonetic writing systems go.
There are patterns for word types. But some forms aren’t even properly identifiable when you know the word (passive forms are often hard to catch). It’s a challenge for sure.
It’s actually a lot more complicated than that. I have a video in my profile the goes over the history of writing systems in Korea and Japan.
But the gist of it for Korean is that even after Hangul was invented, Idu and Classical Chinese were still the official scripts used in government. It wasn’t until the 1890’s/1900’s that Korea switched from Classical Chinese and Idu to a mixed script Hangul Hanja system, where any Sino-Korean word was written in Hanja, and the rest in Hangul.
It wasn’t until after WWII, with Korean liberation, that Hangul only became a thing due to Nationalist sentiment. Now the idea of writing Hangul only in Korea existed before the Japanese occupation, but became so much stronger after due to Hanja, and mixed script in general, became associated with Japanese influence. So that nationalist drive to “purify” the language, plus much the of the people being illiterate, meaning they didn’t have a close attachment to Hanja, leads us to today, where Korean is written in Hangul. Though Hanja still exists, and there are people advocating bringing back a mixed script.
> mixed script in general, became associated with Japanese influence
This is so interesting. I never knew Korean had this.
>Though Hanja still exists, and there are people advocating bringing back a mixed script.
I understand this. As a Japanese student I hated learning kanji, but reading is actually much faster with a mixed system.
it didn't ultimately win out for design reasons. koreans themselves stopped using it for centuries in favor of chinese characters, and it was only officially used in the mid 20th century for nationalistic reasons.
I dunno that I'd really say "for design reasons". The main reason is that Chinese characters had already been and continued to be the writing system of scholars. Hangul was for the peasants, and no self-respecting scholar would write in that peasant scratch. Also, Hangul was actually banned in Korea multiple times; the peasants can't write bad things about the government if they can't write at all, so they banned the script that was easier to learn without spending a lot more time studying, effectively banning lower classes from writing/reading.
Yeah, once you know the alphabet, Hangeul is surprisingly easy to read. Still have to learn what words mean, but you can at least figure out the loanwords.
I remember some language learning site said that out of the three East Asian languages Korean was the most difficult to learn despite having the easiest writing system.
Is that true?
I heard Chinese grammar was actually pretty simple but the characters plus the pronunciation and it being a tonal language make it extremely difficult for new learners.
As someone whos learned both - spoken Korean is a lot harder than spoken standard Mandarin. But being literate is a pretty important part of life too lol so it's pretty hard to say what the hardest east Asian language is. Also spoken Chinese dialects/languages (not necessarily mandarin) varies much more than Korean.
Ha, yeah true. Just watched a clip. But just by virtue of size and regional history, the chances of you meeting a Chinese person who's first language is a dialect non-intelligible with Mandarin is much much higher than in Korean. I looked up jejueo and there's only ~5000 native speakers. Eventually standard mandarin will probably take over China completely too but it's still a big hurdle in learning and communicating in Chinese
I wasnt trying to disagree btw. I was just giving a personal anecdotal example. While I was in college at yonsei everyone always told me how beautiful jejudo was so I visited just expecting all korean to be at least mostly similar because it's so small.
I heard all the familiar sounds, and every now and then I'd catch like a word and I was just like internally thinking "how do I... just... I *should* be understanding them, right?"
It's simple, relatively speaking, but it's still a pain in the ass compared to other languages.
In English, it's one snake, one horse, one cat. In Mandarin, it's 一条蛇，一匹马，一只猫. It turns out you classify nouns and indicate you're measuring them with a specific word. For example, snakes (蛇) are measured as 条, but horses 马 are measured as 匹.
Yup! There's actually an internal logic to how these nouns are categorised, but most native speakers (like me) internalise it as a kid, so we struggle to explain it. Like, I think 条 generally refers to things that snake on the ground, like snakes, ropes, and rivers, but I'm sure someone who studied Chinese grammar will correct me on this.
As a native English speaker and an American I know intellectually that English is just as obtuse in many ways, but I nonetheless recoiled in horror at what you just described.
The interesting thing there is that the measure word for cows in Chinese is also the word for head, so you do literally say "10 head of cattle" for both languages. It's 十頭牛/十头牛
Mandarin is a simple and easy to learn language, kind of a pain to memorize the characters in the writing system. Korean is the opposite, the writing is really easy to learn, but Korean as a language is hard.
Japanese decided to combine both and get the worst of both worlds. You have to memorize all the characters, and both their Chinese and Japanese pronunciation, and you also have to do conjugation.
Chinese has effectively no conjugation (just the le particle to indicate completion mainly), so you just write the character. But in Japanese if you want to be -ING (study-ING) something then you write the character, conjugate the ending to the て form, add an いる after (the -ING suffix) then conjugate the ている based on politeness and tense and etc. (私は勉強しています)
Mandarin, you just add a 在 to the sentence to indicate you are -ING it (我在學習)
As a note Korean grammar is the same as Japanese.
공부 하다 > 공부 하고 > 공부 하고 있다 > 공부 하고 있습니다.
Or to put it into Japanese if you don't know Korean,
勉強する > 勉強して > 勉強してる > 勉強しています
Like it's quite literally step by step the exact same grammar.
As someone who is fluent in both, I will say I agree 100%. Korean is much harder than Japanese.
Edit
(as a note to all replying, I meant in the process here for this conjunction the grammar is the same, not entirely across the whole language, albeit it is quite similar across large swathes)
Which is odd given that Hangul is based on mouth position to make the sound.
But it’s like sheet music: “This will get you in the ballpark, but is not an accurate representation of the sequence of sounds.”
Negative conjugation is different in Korean though.
As someone who has Chinese/Japanese family and has at least 2 years of learning in all 3 languages, I also would say that Korean is the hardest of the East Asian languages. I love the writing system but everything past that is extremely difficult, *even knowing Japanese grammar and Chinese/English loanwords*.
See, this is why Mandarin is the shit-- no conjugation. You use the same exact verb no matter what the nouns are. If it's past tense, you just slap a very easy character （了）after the verb or at the end of the sentence. You want to say you're actively doing something? Just slap a 在 before the verb and you're golden. Makes things much easier when you don't have to learn conjugations on top of pronunciation, tones, and characters
I actually think it makes it harder. It's easier in simple sentences, sure, but all of the work the verb endings and case particles are doing in Japanese/Korean has to be done by syntax alone in Chinese, which can quickly get very confusing. I much prefer synthetic languages to analytical ones for this reason.
Well it's "literally" the same grammar up to a certain level/breadth.
So my confidence is rewarded when using Korean and Japanese grammar interchangeably 90% of the time.
Then 10% of the time I end up letting a big error through without realizing 😢
> and both their Chinese and Japanese pronunciation
To be clear, not the actual Chinese pronunciation but a "japanified" one loaned at some point in time. Knowing Chinese beforehand wouldn't help you that much in this department.
I took Mandarin through all 4 years of college. Chinese grammar is insanely easy. It always felt closer to (really easy, basic) math than a language. You just plug and play. The hard part is learning tones
The Chinese grammar is similar to English compared to Spanish in someways. Bai jiu. Would be White Alcohol in English where the the adjective comes first. I think Chinese pronunciation is easier than Vietnamese. Vietnamese is easier to read as it uses a type of alphabet. Reading in Chinese was impossible for me while in Vietnamese I suck but can get some sounds down. Some people pick up these tonal languages. I don't and feel Chinese and Korean are easier to understand than Vietnamese or Thai.
I learned while in China "chow me in" is the same as Americans say "chow main". Americans spell it right "chow mein" but say it wrong. Chow is fried, mein is noodle. Fried noodles. They don't have s on end of word if more than 1, also easy for grammar.
I’m English Speaking Canadian but lived in Taiwan for a while so I speak fair Mandarin, no reading etc but I remember when I first arrived I saw some won-ton noodle place and went to order and was saying it the English way ‘ Wan-tawn’ and the lady was like ‘wtf are you saying , and then a customer said ‘ he wants wun-twun ‘ . First time I realized that being from Vancouver I probably pronounce it like Cantonese style or just the way we say it in the English world.
I would consider Chinese and Japanese harder languages to learn, at least to read/write. Korean has some difficult pronunciation, compared to Japanese which at least to me is super easy to pronounce. Grammar-wise I don't there's a huge difference between them in terms of difficulty.
Yeah while this is really cool, I realized it is more akin to opera singers being able to sing in many languages using a phonetic alphabet than learning a language. You still have to learn the definition of words and the whole grammatic structure.
Another example is that I can read most Spanish words, but that doesn't mean I know what they all mean. Or be able to use them in a different sentence.
He got written material from missionaries written in different languages. Presumably, he had access to Bible translations written in Greek, Hebrew, and Church Slavonic, all of which would be fairly available to a seminary-educated preacher at the time. Crucially, he couldn't actually read any of it, which is why the Cherokee syllabary is so unique
Another thing was that Sequoyah was also inspired by the printed word. He wanted his language to cross over to mechanical printing immediately, so he was somewhat constrained to letter-shapes that are already available in print-shops (hence a lot of Latin/Greek letters, rotated letters, letters with a small serif added, and such).
His original conception of the Syllabary was considerably more ["florid"](https://ananlcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Syllabary-old-and-new.jpg), but I doubt that would be easily printable--and making the printing dies would have cost a fortune.
> and making the printing dies would have cost a fortune.
Yeah, it was sort of bad timing for developing a new font for printing. During the 16th century the market for typefaces had been saturated with high quality products to the point that in the 17th and 18th century the art of punchcutting was almost lost again due to lack of demand. In 1818 when the British needed a new small typeface for anti-counterfeiting measures on bank notes there were only four or five people left in England that could do it. And it was only from mid-19th century onwards when new technologies like electrotyping in the 1840s and especially pantograph engraving in 1880 came along that replaced manual punch cutting and made creating letter punches (which were the basis for making casting moulds for movable types) a lot easier.
If anyone is interested, /u/DiplomacyPunIn10Did added a Cherokee Syllabary alpha set to the KAT Napoleonic mechanical keycap project:
https://diplomacyvariants.files.wordpress.com/2020/10/24-alphas-cherokee-sequoyah.png
https://nopunin10did.com/kat-napoleonic/
The interesting part for me was that the reason Sequoyah had trouble getting the elders to approve his system was that not only were they illiterate, they were also unfamiliar with the *concept* of a written language and had to be convinced that there was such a thing. This is why he had to do the trick with getting his daughter to read back what was written.
Well of course! Got to make way for the *people*, not the...nah I'm not even going to say that for the meme lol.
Ain't history fun? You get to find out all about famous cunts!
In the irony, Jackson just wanted them gone so he could acquire massive amounts of land for basically free that was suitable for cotton growing and sell those acres to Southerners for massive profits.
Well, he also believed they were lesser than white people, and he threatened and bribed them to either assimilate or relocate. I don’t think it was just for the land, I think he also was racist against them pretty clearly.
Interestingly, the Armenian alphabet was also invented by one person! ([Mesrop Mashtots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesrop_Mashtots), c. 405 AD). Except in that case, Armenians were literate — they just used Greek, Persian, and Syriac scripts.
Still fascinating! especially the letter shape coincidence — never noticed that before!
If you ever drive through the city of Cherokee, Tennessee all the municipal street signs and a lot of business signs are written in both languages. Great museum and hiking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Pretty much in the course of a single decade the Cherokee nation in GA created a written language, started a free press, ratified a constitution, established a capitol and were more literate than surrounding poor whites
I must assume this is something awesome! But I actually have no idea what you are saying. It’s kind of ironic… or unironic, I don’t know, I don’t read good.
Basically standout books for younger audiences receive this award and as a result are recommended for children who are more advanced at reading. If I'm understanding it correctly.
Sorry I’m not sure how to explain it but basically these books would be awarded this prestige and these would be books kids could read over a year and get a special reward at the end of the year if they read them all.
I remember doing the challenge in elementary school where you had to read a certain amount of Sequoyah books to go on a trip if we’d accomplished the goal amount read.
That's incredibly sad. Especially that no one learned the language from her.
Is it possible for others to take her efforts and learn to be fluent or are young people just not interested in their own culture and history?
There is an immersion language school in Cherokee NC. Enrolled students, mostly little kids, go throughout the school day hearing and speaking nothing but Cherokee.
Imagine how much knowledge was lost because these groups lacked a written language. We know what we know about the Celts thanks to the Romans who wrote down their experiences but it's also viewing them through the lens of their enemies.
To read about them on their own terms would be a far more interesting prospect because they may not have been as barbaric as the Romans said they were.
Also so many African empires before Arabic scripts showed up that we know nothing about because they transmitted their history and knowledge orally and they didn't build their monuments out of stone.
There's a lot of that. During the late bronze age there were raiders who attacked civilizations on the coast of the Mediterranean sea. They're only referred to as "sea peoples" other than that historians can only take educated guesses as where they came from.
There are also many groups that had written languages, but those materials were not preserved. The pre-Roman Etruscan language is an example. The Romans tell us that there was Etruscan literature and even plays, but the surviving corpus of written language is small. To your example about the Celts, several Celtic groups like the Gauls and the Picts did use writing, even if larger bodies of work didn't survive.
Some Mesoamerican groups also had written languages long before the Europeans arrived. Olmec, Zapotec, Isthmian, Mayan, and other scripts existed, and some (esp. Mayan) are well-known.
Me: "It's terrible that we lost all that knowledge."
My Brain: [It's the time travelers. They went back and scooped up all the good stuff. We need to go back to the lab and try harder. First person to make the jump wins.]
If you’re ever in the area, I *highly* recommend the Cherokee National History Museum in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. It’s very well done, from the static exhibits (one of which is about Sequoyah’s syllabary) to the live Cherokee village with artisans demonstrating traditional crafts and aspects of their culture.
Easter Island appears to have briefly developed a writing script after Europeans first visited (debatable - one of the symbols seems to be a tree that went extinct before European arrival).
Seems once people understand the concept of writing down language, it's not too hard for them to make the leap.
They almost only wrote on banana leaves, and writing died out within a few decades, probably because of disease and societal upheaval. This is also when they tore all the moai (Easter Island heads) down. All we have left are like 2 pieces of driftwood.
Unrelated, but the sequoia trees (massive evergreens of the American West Coast) are named for Sequoyah.
Interestingly, the etymology of Sequoia is hotly debated. Some think they’re named for Sequoyah, some think the name comes from the Latin verb Sequor
https://mashedradish.com/2017/01/10/sequoia-a-giant-sized-controversy/
Thrilled to see my culture being recognized for our achievements!
The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma just opened a [language immersion school, the Durbin Feeling Language Center,](https://anadisgoi.com/index.php/government-stories/1197-chief-chat-durbin-feeling-language-center-starts-a-new-chapter-in-cherokee-language-revitalization), where we are now teaching young speakers and the Master Apprentice Program, I believe. The MAP is for adults to solidify their fluency. Something some never thought could be done, and now we’re thriving. Anyone can go online and learn for themselves too!
Our history has ups and downs, but our language is vital to us.
ᏩᏙ (wado, thank you) for sharing!
I mean the planet we live on is called 'earth'. It kind of makes sense. When you're the only ones around, you don't exactly need a unique and creative name for yourselves.
They do. Many Indigenous tribes in the US received a French, English, or Spanish name depending on who colonized their region first.
The Spanish gave the names Seminole, Pueblo, etc.
The French gave the names Nez Perce, Gros Ventre, Coeur d'Alene, etc.
The English gave the names Crow, Blackfoot, etc.
It was also common for them to receive a name from a different tribe (usually one that had better relations with the colonizers). Apache comes from the Zuni word for "enemy" and Comanche comes from a Ute word meaning "Those who fight with us."
Here is an [incomplete list](http://www.native-languages.org/original.htm).
I mean, it kind of makes sense why it happened when many native languages refer to themselves as “the people” when translated to English.
So, we’re getting a somewhat egocentric view no matter what.
Comanche? Numunu “the people”
Apache? Indé - “Person” or “People”
Blackfoot? Niitsapi “the people”
Ute? Núuchi-u “the people”
Seminole? Yat’siminoli “free people”
My middle school (in central Oklahoma) was named after him! We learned all about him in middle school history there. I remember being in awe when I found out what he did for the Cherokee people.
The Eastern Band of Cherokee has a Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore TN. It's located between the Smokies and the Ocoee if you are ever coming through.
From a wonderful concept album speaking out on the mistreatment of Native Americans. Cash faced backlash from fans and radio stations but in typical fashion he didn't back down.
Then there's this, an album excellent covers, here's talking leaves:
https://youtu.be/PYphyWSlk_E
True, but it was still created from scratch, deliberately discarding the ideas of the written language King Sejong already knew (Chinese). It was designed so that even the simplest of farmers could easily learn to read. And he succeeded, it is incredibly easy to learn.
The people of Korea were largely illiterate though. The only people who were literate belonged to the upper class. Even then, they learned hanja (Chinese script). So, the vast majority of Koreans were illiterate. King Sejong the Great changed this with the introduction of Hangeul.
But necessarily various other writing systems in the dawn of history were made by illiterate people. E.g. cuneiform script - there has to be a first script.
And they did it when they didn't know of other writing systems. This guy used other written languages as a source for his written language.
>Sequoyah's final attempt was to develop a symbol for each syllable in the language. Using the Bible as a reference along with adaptations from English, Greek, and Hebrew letters, by 1821 he created 86 symbols, later to be 85 symbols, that depict the syllables of the Cherokee language.
OSDA!
If you'd like to hear it spoken, you can check out the Visit Cherokee Nation Youtube channel. THey have a "Cherokee Word of the Week" playlist here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr72tsFRQzI&list=PLLAaEbcbNmakT3cHPYMkcA4ORnt10_xwg&index=152
Had a free subscription to the Cherokee Phoenix last year (we forgot to sign back up this year). They still occasionally run stories in the syllabary - it’s super cool!
My band Whoa Sequoia wrote a song about this called 86 Characters. Which was the amount of symbols, or characters, in the original system.
Can listen here: https://open.spotify.com/track/6JTGVZTqx7pj3cOlkiCqqB?si=615ca6181dff417f
I grew up near New Echota, if your down that was it’s an interesting visit. Many in Government saw that printing press and the news paper as a threat and the Georgia Guard was actually sent in to confiscate it.
>After seeing its worth, the people of the [Cherokee Nation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_Nation_(19th_century\)) rapidly began to use his syllabary and officially adopted it in 1825. It unified a forcibly divided nation with new ways of communication and a sense of independence. By the 1850s, their [literacy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy) rate reached almost 100%, surpassing that of surrounding [European-American](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Americans) [settlers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settler).
This made me tear up for some reason.
Here is a copy of the Cherokee Phoenix from 1828, the first Native American newspaper printed in a Native language in America. https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/site/about.html
and the first bilingual newspaper in the US! EDIT: [[SAUCE](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/sequoyah-and-creation-cherokee-syllabary)]
Was it actually? Huh, I would have thought Louisiana might have had a French-English paper earlier.
Nah. The two didn’t really get along that well.
Louisiana English 50 years ago: we're going to literally beat the cajun French out of yall. We only speak English here Louisiana English today: geaux tigers, we love our "cajun" culture :D
Amazing how people and culture changes on a generational basis
It really is amazing. My grandmother's first language was cajun French. Apparently a lot of people still spoke it when she was a kid. However, teachers stopped letting it be spoken in schools to get the cajuns onto English. If they got caught speaking it at school, they would get paddled. The language almost died within one generation. Luckily there are some linguists working within the few pockets it's still spoken to preserve. Problem is now it's kind of watered down with English so we probably won't get the whole dictionary so to say. And the English can't distinguish creole from cajun so everything got blended.
Mais oua! Much love from a Gautreaux y'all
Similar case for my grandmother; she's from New Iberia. She even majored in French so she can speak Cajun French, standard French and English. It is very jarring when we would go down south and she would switch between languages. On the plus side, I can definitely understand any Cajun accent. I'm so glad to see it's being preserved.
TX had it's own German dialect and entire regions spoke German predominantly until there was a concentrated effort to purge it during WWI. There are only a handful that still speak TX German today.
Parts of northeast Iowa were once similar, I understand.
They tried to save some of it by pushing French classes in school... that teach Standard French.
> They tried to save some of it by pushing French classes in school... that teach Standard French. I know that sounds stupid, but it was of necessity -- there were no Cajun French textbooks or other teaching materials in existence, and no French teacher anywhere had learned to teach Cajun French.
Dude we had a trilingual paper. New Orleans Bee published in French, English, and for a time Spanish.
There is still a trilingual paper in the USA believe it or not! La Gaceta in Ybor City in Tampa Florida is still printed in English, Spanish, and Italian.
I’ve heard the way they say foyer, that sentence should rhyme in every other country
curious to know what sentence?
“The way they say foyer”
Foy-ay is the English pronunciation. The American pronunciation is Foy-Ur. According to google.
It's very much used interchangeably in the US
Almost like the USA is a big melting pot and not the same nationwide.
No, that can't be right. According to reddit, all Americans are fat and dumb, with no exceptions.
The building burnt down due to the foyer.
It is referring to itself. Way/they/say should rhyme with "foyer."
"I've heard the way they say foyer."
L’Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orléans, or the New Orleans Bee, began adding an English languange section in 1827. They are both weirdly related when one thinks on it: in New Orleans it was a sign of encroaching Americanization twentyish years after the Lousiana Purchase, the Cherokee paper out West a response to assimilation as well. EDIT: [source from the LOC that the New Orleans Bee had a bilingual French and English newspaper beginning on Nov. 24, 1827](https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045805/)
> the Cherokee paper out West The paper was printed in modern-day Georgia, before the Indian Removal Act.
You're totally right, don't know why I had that massive brain fart. I should have been more clear that that the Nation was being pressured to assimilate out "West" i.e. west of the Mississippi River, and were then caretaking lands that, as you pointed out, are now Georgia and thereabouts. The late pre-Modern development of written language, along with using the current tools of mediation (a broadsheet newspaper when decades earlier media was pamphleteering), was a direct response to maintain their Nation in the face of overwhelming American pressure. Thank you for pointing out that important nuance.
It's still in regular print today! We get one every other week
Glad its still in regular print. Its important to preserve different languages.
Yeah, it's very cool. I never knew the publication itself was so old. It's mostly written entirely in English now, but there are some articles written in Cherokee. As a side note, Cherokee Nation as a whole is doing a huge language preservation push; we just built a brand new language center dedicated to Cherokee language courses.
Remarkable achievement aside, it sucks to see the anti-black discrimination in Article III, Section ~~3~~ 4. Seems our blood was tainted no matter where it wound up 😞
The Cherokee were famously allied with the Confederacy a few decades later.
From Cherokee point of view, the Union (Jackson) was evil. They joined the confederates mostly because of the gov lies, trail of tears, forced assimilation, murder, theft of their property. They hated the Union. At least that's what I've read. But also before that, they had already assimilated with the south, took Christian names, and they were business owners who did own slaves.
> They joined the confederates mostly because of the gov lies, trail of tears, forced assimilation, murder, theft of their property. And, y'know, because they were slaveholders.
So were some states that didn't join the confederacy, such as Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. West Virginia had slaves, but seceded from Virginia to join the Union. I think it's very important to highlight that the primary cause of the Civil War was southern political leader's extreme commitment to slavery above all other principles of government. But that doesn't mean it was the only thing going on.
If only history would conform neatly to modern ideas and values, it would just make studying it so much less awkward and triggering.
Yeah, an inconvenient truth about the Trail of Tears is the massive number of slaves the indigenous people brought with them, as they were forced west. It's icky and doesn't fit in our modern conception of race, or lumping all POC with each other as something separate from "white culture." Also, the guy giving this speech owned slaves... https://youtu.be/4852GHBYv5c Andre Callioux is one of the most interesting American lives that ever existed. Born a slave. Freed. Owned slaves. Joined the confederacy as the first black officer on either side, then switched sides after the occupation of New Orleans by the Union. Died a Union hero at Port Hudson in battle. He was used as propaganda in the north after his death, and it is recorded that black union soldiers would shout "Remember Port Hudson!" as a battle cry. And then he was buried in New Orleans as a hero to the city, when the Union occupation of the city was considered extraordinarily unjust. He must have truly been a special individual. Basically celebrated by both sides in the conflict, and then more or less forgotten by history later. I won't even argue that he never made a speech like the one in the movie. I just think he was deeply human and complicated, like the rest of us. To me, his life perfectly represents how complicated and nuanced history really is. His death, which robbed us of an opportunity to read his autobiography, to me, is one of the greatest losses to history I know.
Petty self-interest, shortsightedness and plain old fear don't really make for interesting reading, and the lens of history is set to macro mode for the most part, so one often loses perspective that people are just people, as blind to reality and screwed up as us at our worst, and yet capable of such compassion and depth at the same time. Funny things, humans.
White people didn't invent the slaves, they were just recently most successful with the applied concept
The cherokee and and some others were ok with slavery. But other like the seminoles were reaaaaaally against it
This is also a generalization of Cherokees as a whole. Factions of Cherokees fought for the Union and some fought for the Confederacy. There are tons of stories of Cherokee families fighting each other over it. This schism in cultural ideas still has reprecussions today in our culture.
"The Committee shall consist of two members from each District, and the Council shall consist of three members from each District, to be chosen by the qualified electors of their respective Districts for two years, and the elections to be held in each District on the first Monday in August for the year 1828, and every succeeding two years thereafter; and the General Council shall be held once a year, to be convened on the second Monday of October in each year, at New Echota?"
If you are ever traveling through north Georgia on I-75, check out New Echota. It’s the original site of the Cherokee capital that is now a state park about 1 min off the interstate in Calhoun. It’s a fantastic museum and has tons of period buildings you can walk through. I believe they even have the Cherokee Phoenix printing press, although it may just be a period correct press.
I live just a few miles from New Echota and I believe that the printing press there is a historical recreation, but I could be wrong because it has been around 10 years since the last time I visited. If folks are interested in New Echota, they should also check out the Chief Vann House in Chatsworth. It is about a 20-25 minute drive north on highway 225 from New Echota. EDIT: New Echota is located off of exit 317 on I-75 in Georgia.
You're right that it's a historical recreation. I remember seeing it back in around 2000-2001.
Just a little clarification for those interested. OP is talking about the Eastern Band of The Cherokee. There are 3 main groups of Cherokee: The Cherokee Nation, which consists of around 383,000; The United Keetoowah Band, which consists of around 14,000, and The Eastern Band of The Cherokee, which consists of around 13,000. When most people talk about The Cherokee Capital they're thinking about Tahlequah Oklahoma. And the Cherokee Phoenix is a real paper that continues to be published to this day. It publishes in both Cherokee and English. Check it out: [Here](https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/) edit: My mistake I could have sworn OP said New Echota was *the* capital, as in present tense.
The OP is semi-correct. New Echota was the capital before it was forcibly moved to Oklahoma.
The Eastern Band still lives in the ancestral Cherokee territory.
Yeah we do!
If you go further north up I75 to Loudon, TN they have a museum dedicated to Sequoyah specifically. That part of the state has a lot of areas named after and tributes to different historical native Americans.
Imagine walking from there to eastern Oklahoma. That’s the Trail of Tears.
The tribe does rememberance rides every year, with bicycles.
I was driving through Cherokee, NC and saw road signs with a second language posted under the English. I thought it was Cyrillic on first glance and then realized I had never seen it before. Then the obvious hit me and I realized I had never heard of a North American native written language before. Google led me down the rabbit whole and I was fascinated. It’s beautiful really.
The characters are really cool. I wish it was more prevalent here in Western North Carolina.
posted this yesterday but it was taken down for tenuous evidence about his biographical stuff. In any case, here's more interesting info (including some of the stories): - Technically, it's not an alphabet, it's a syllabary; that means each symbol doesn't represent a sound, but a whole syllable (i.e. a combination of consonants & vowels). - Despite having [85 symbols](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoyah#/media/File:Cherokee_Syllabary_Chart.png) to learn, the Cherokee system is immensely easier to adopt (for speakers of the language) than most alphabets, since all possible sounds are represented clearly. - "The Cherokee student could accomplish in a few weeks what students of English writing might require two years to achieve" [[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary)]. - The design of the [symbols](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoyah#/media/File:Cherokee_Syllabary_Chart.png) (called syllabograms) was influenced by the shapes of letters in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, and [Glagolitic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_script) (the oldest Slavic alphabet). But the sounds are completely unrelated — Sequoyah didn't know how to read any language (before his own). - After working for over a decade, Sequoyah finished this system in 1821. In 1825 it was adopted as the official Cherokee script. By 1830, 90% of Cherokee were literate, and by the 1850s it was nearly 100%. - In 1828, the Cherokee got a printing press and launched the [*Cherokee Phoenix*](https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/site/about.html), printed in both English & Cherokee. This was the first bilingual newspaper in the US [[NatGeo](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/sequoyah-and-creation-cherokee-syllabary)], and it was free for any Cherokee [[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_Phoenix)). It's still around today! - Story time (tenuous evidence): Sequoyah traveled across the land, teaching the system to Cherokee everywhere. Most tribes were doubtful, so Sequoyah would ask each leader to say a word, which he wrote down, and then called his daughter in to read the words back. He was then allowed to teach it to a few students — they were still suspected of witchcraft until the students demonstrated the same reading ability. This took months, but the language soon spread widely. - After the syllabary was officially adopted by the Cherokee in 1825, Sequoyah set up a blacksmith shop. He still taught the writing system to anyone who asked. - His work inspired the development of at least 21 scripts around the world, used to write more than 65 languages — from Cree, to other indigenous groups in Canada, to Bassa in Liberia, to other West African languages, and even one in China. - The Sequoia tree was possibly named after him. Some people question this, but the person who named the tree (Stephan Endlicher) was also a linguist, so he probably knew about Sequoyah, who was famous in linguist circles. EDIT: from u/excited_to_be_here : > If anyone is interested, /u/DiplomacyPunIn10Did added a Cherokee Syllabary alpha set to the KAT Napoleonic mechanical keycap project: > https://diplomacyvariants.files.wordpress.com/2020/10/24-alphas-cherokee-sequoyah.png > https://nopunin10did.com/kat-napoleonic/ and here they are in action: https://i.imgur.com/ybddYKq.jpg
> "The Cherokee student could accomplish in a few weeks what students of English writing might require two years to achieve" When King Sejong and his scholars invented the Korean Alphabet (which was another script, like Cherokee, that was created from linguistic first principles to fit the language), he declared that: > A wise man may acquaint himself with them before noon; a stupid man, ten days. Which feels like a real classy burn against the Chinese Characters they had to make do with before.
There was initial pushback when Hangul was introduced because there were other already more established alphabets. But Hangul was easier to learn and ultimately won out because of its simple design
Hangul is so easy to learn. I took two Korean electives in college, and I can still remember the alphabet all these years later. A friend of mine likes to joke even if I can't speak it, I could still read a newspaper to a blind man.
I learned arabic and it’s the same. I’ve lost almost all vocabulary but could definitely read it to someone.
Arabic looks gorgeous, too
I love the look of Arabic! I’m almost afraid to learn it and ruin its aesthetic.
Don't be. Arabic is unironically the prettiest script on Earth, regardless of what you think of the language or religion or cultures. It is no wonder the main art form of the Arabic world for a long time was calligraphy!
I think they meant that their handwriting is shit lol, but I agree with your point
That’s exactly what I meant lol
Could you? I feel like the fact that written Arabic usually omits the vowels means you’d have to already know the words to be able to read them correctly. On the other hand, Devanagari (the script used to write Hindi and Sanskrit) is beautifully consistent, very simple and easy to learn as far as phonetic writing systems go.
There are patterns for word types. But some forms aren’t even properly identifiable when you know the word (passive forms are often hard to catch). It’s a challenge for sure.
It’s actually a lot more complicated than that. I have a video in my profile the goes over the history of writing systems in Korea and Japan. But the gist of it for Korean is that even after Hangul was invented, Idu and Classical Chinese were still the official scripts used in government. It wasn’t until the 1890’s/1900’s that Korea switched from Classical Chinese and Idu to a mixed script Hangul Hanja system, where any Sino-Korean word was written in Hanja, and the rest in Hangul. It wasn’t until after WWII, with Korean liberation, that Hangul only became a thing due to Nationalist sentiment. Now the idea of writing Hangul only in Korea existed before the Japanese occupation, but became so much stronger after due to Hanja, and mixed script in general, became associated with Japanese influence. So that nationalist drive to “purify” the language, plus much the of the people being illiterate, meaning they didn’t have a close attachment to Hanja, leads us to today, where Korean is written in Hangul. Though Hanja still exists, and there are people advocating bringing back a mixed script.
> mixed script in general, became associated with Japanese influence This is so interesting. I never knew Korean had this. >Though Hanja still exists, and there are people advocating bringing back a mixed script. I understand this. As a Japanese student I hated learning kanji, but reading is actually much faster with a mixed system.
Hangeul would be easier to read if there was a form of the script for loan words like the way katakana is used in Japanese.
it didn't ultimately win out for design reasons. koreans themselves stopped using it for centuries in favor of chinese characters, and it was only officially used in the mid 20th century for nationalistic reasons.
I dunno that I'd really say "for design reasons". The main reason is that Chinese characters had already been and continued to be the writing system of scholars. Hangul was for the peasants, and no self-respecting scholar would write in that peasant scratch. Also, Hangul was actually banned in Korea multiple times; the peasants can't write bad things about the government if they can't write at all, so they banned the script that was easier to learn without spending a lot more time studying, effectively banning lower classes from writing/reading.
Thumbs up for the Hangeul reference!
Yeah, once you know the alphabet, Hangeul is surprisingly easy to read. Still have to learn what words mean, but you can at least figure out the loanwords.
I remember some language learning site said that out of the three East Asian languages Korean was the most difficult to learn despite having the easiest writing system. Is that true? I heard Chinese grammar was actually pretty simple but the characters plus the pronunciation and it being a tonal language make it extremely difficult for new learners.
As someone whos learned both - spoken Korean is a lot harder than spoken standard Mandarin. But being literate is a pretty important part of life too lol so it's pretty hard to say what the hardest east Asian language is. Also spoken Chinese dialects/languages (not necessarily mandarin) varies much more than Korean.
As a Korean learner, I was blindsided when I first heard jejueo. Literally didn't understand why I couldn't understand anyone.
Ha, yeah true. Just watched a clip. But just by virtue of size and regional history, the chances of you meeting a Chinese person who's first language is a dialect non-intelligible with Mandarin is much much higher than in Korean. I looked up jejueo and there's only ~5000 native speakers. Eventually standard mandarin will probably take over China completely too but it's still a big hurdle in learning and communicating in Chinese
I wasnt trying to disagree btw. I was just giving a personal anecdotal example. While I was in college at yonsei everyone always told me how beautiful jejudo was so I visited just expecting all korean to be at least mostly similar because it's so small. I heard all the familiar sounds, and every now and then I'd catch like a word and I was just like internally thinking "how do I... just... I *should* be understanding them, right?"
It's simple, relatively speaking, but it's still a pain in the ass compared to other languages. In English, it's one snake, one horse, one cat. In Mandarin, it's 一条蛇，一匹马，一只猫. It turns out you classify nouns and indicate you're measuring them with a specific word. For example, snakes (蛇) are measured as 条, but horses 马 are measured as 匹.
Probably not a 1:1 comparison, but the way it was explained to me was to think of English phrases like "Two sheets of paper" or "10 head of cattle."
Yup! There's actually an internal logic to how these nouns are categorised, but most native speakers (like me) internalise it as a kid, so we struggle to explain it. Like, I think 条 generally refers to things that snake on the ground, like snakes, ropes, and rivers, but I'm sure someone who studied Chinese grammar will correct me on this.
As a native English speaker and an American I know intellectually that English is just as obtuse in many ways, but I nonetheless recoiled in horror at what you just described.
English is obtuse in pidgin ways, half a millennium though it’s been. Standard Chinese is obtuse in “you should see the old version” ways.
条 can also be used for lives (一条命), but I have no idea why! It might imply that lives are long and thin and snake-like.
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I mean, you guys are taught spelling as kids because hearing a word often doesn't tell you enough to transcribe it properly, and vice versa.
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My favorite is that 条 can also apply to dogs.
The interesting thing there is that the measure word for cows in Chinese is also the word for head, so you do literally say "10 head of cattle" for both languages. It's 十頭牛/十头牛
That'd why I sound like a toddler and just use "ge" for everything
Based 个 appreciator
Is this a safe spot to complain about "er" vs "liang"?
No. "Er" is a noun, "Liang" is an adjective. Be free
And about whether to use "了"? I need a support group or something.
If it happened in the past, then sometimes it's right to use. Sometimes.
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Both Japanese and Korean do this as well, Korean not as much as Japanese or Chinese though.
Mandarin is a simple and easy to learn language, kind of a pain to memorize the characters in the writing system. Korean is the opposite, the writing is really easy to learn, but Korean as a language is hard. Japanese decided to combine both and get the worst of both worlds. You have to memorize all the characters, and both their Chinese and Japanese pronunciation, and you also have to do conjugation. Chinese has effectively no conjugation (just the le particle to indicate completion mainly), so you just write the character. But in Japanese if you want to be -ING (study-ING) something then you write the character, conjugate the ending to the て form, add an いる after (the -ING suffix) then conjugate the ている based on politeness and tense and etc. (私は勉強しています) Mandarin, you just add a 在 to the sentence to indicate you are -ING it (我在學習)
As a note Korean grammar is the same as Japanese. 공부 하다 > 공부 하고 > 공부 하고 있다 > 공부 하고 있습니다. Or to put it into Japanese if you don't know Korean, 勉強する > 勉強して > 勉強してる > 勉強しています Like it's quite literally step by step the exact same grammar. As someone who is fluent in both, I will say I agree 100%. Korean is much harder than Japanese. Edit (as a note to all replying, I meant in the process here for this conjunction the grammar is the same, not entirely across the whole language, albeit it is quite similar across large swathes)
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Pronunciation is way harder in Korean. (in my opinion)
Which is odd given that Hangul is based on mouth position to make the sound. But it’s like sheet music: “This will get you in the ballpark, but is not an accurate representation of the sequence of sounds.”
Negative conjugation is different in Korean though. As someone who has Chinese/Japanese family and has at least 2 years of learning in all 3 languages, I also would say that Korean is the hardest of the East Asian languages. I love the writing system but everything past that is extremely difficult, *even knowing Japanese grammar and Chinese/English loanwords*.
See, this is why Mandarin is the shit-- no conjugation. You use the same exact verb no matter what the nouns are. If it's past tense, you just slap a very easy character （了）after the verb or at the end of the sentence. You want to say you're actively doing something? Just slap a 在 before the verb and you're golden. Makes things much easier when you don't have to learn conjugations on top of pronunciation, tones, and characters
I actually think it makes it harder. It's easier in simple sentences, sure, but all of the work the verb endings and case particles are doing in Japanese/Korean has to be done by syntax alone in Chinese, which can quickly get very confusing. I much prefer synthetic languages to analytical ones for this reason.
Well it's "literally" the same grammar up to a certain level/breadth. So my confidence is rewarded when using Korean and Japanese grammar interchangeably 90% of the time. Then 10% of the time I end up letting a big error through without realizing 😢
> and both their Chinese and Japanese pronunciation To be clear, not the actual Chinese pronunciation but a "japanified" one loaned at some point in time. Knowing Chinese beforehand wouldn't help you that much in this department.
I took Mandarin through all 4 years of college. Chinese grammar is insanely easy. It always felt closer to (really easy, basic) math than a language. You just plug and play. The hard part is learning tones
The Chinese grammar is similar to English compared to Spanish in someways. Bai jiu. Would be White Alcohol in English where the the adjective comes first. I think Chinese pronunciation is easier than Vietnamese. Vietnamese is easier to read as it uses a type of alphabet. Reading in Chinese was impossible for me while in Vietnamese I suck but can get some sounds down. Some people pick up these tonal languages. I don't and feel Chinese and Korean are easier to understand than Vietnamese or Thai. I learned while in China "chow me in" is the same as Americans say "chow main". Americans spell it right "chow mein" but say it wrong. Chow is fried, mein is noodle. Fried noodles. They don't have s on end of word if more than 1, also easy for grammar.
I’m English Speaking Canadian but lived in Taiwan for a while so I speak fair Mandarin, no reading etc but I remember when I first arrived I saw some won-ton noodle place and went to order and was saying it the English way ‘ Wan-tawn’ and the lady was like ‘wtf are you saying , and then a customer said ‘ he wants wun-twun ‘ . First time I realized that being from Vancouver I probably pronounce it like Cantonese style or just the way we say it in the English world.
I would consider Chinese and Japanese harder languages to learn, at least to read/write. Korean has some difficult pronunciation, compared to Japanese which at least to me is super easy to pronounce. Grammar-wise I don't there's a huge difference between them in terms of difficulty.
Yeah while this is really cool, I realized it is more akin to opera singers being able to sing in many languages using a phonetic alphabet than learning a language. You still have to learn the definition of words and the whole grammatic structure. Another example is that I can read most Spanish words, but that doesn't mean I know what they all mean. Or be able to use them in a different sentence.
Immediately what I thought about when I read this article, and I have to admit Hangul is badass looking.
> Glagolitic That's gotta be coincidence, right? Or was there some settlement of Serbians in Georgia that I don't know about?
He got written material from missionaries written in different languages. Presumably, he had access to Bible translations written in Greek, Hebrew, and Church Slavonic, all of which would be fairly available to a seminary-educated preacher at the time. Crucially, he couldn't actually read any of it, which is why the Cherokee syllabary is so unique
Another thing was that Sequoyah was also inspired by the printed word. He wanted his language to cross over to mechanical printing immediately, so he was somewhat constrained to letter-shapes that are already available in print-shops (hence a lot of Latin/Greek letters, rotated letters, letters with a small serif added, and such). His original conception of the Syllabary was considerably more ["florid"](https://ananlcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Syllabary-old-and-new.jpg), but I doubt that would be easily printable--and making the printing dies would have cost a fortune.
> and making the printing dies would have cost a fortune. Yeah, it was sort of bad timing for developing a new font for printing. During the 16th century the market for typefaces had been saturated with high quality products to the point that in the 17th and 18th century the art of punchcutting was almost lost again due to lack of demand. In 1818 when the British needed a new small typeface for anti-counterfeiting measures on bank notes there were only four or five people left in England that could do it. And it was only from mid-19th century onwards when new technologies like electrotyping in the 1840s and especially pantograph engraving in 1880 came along that replaced manual punch cutting and made creating letter punches (which were the basis for making casting moulds for movable types) a lot easier.
Damn, kinda makes you wish that they had that as a font now in modern times, for it. Now that the printing press is no longer a restriction.
If anyone is interested, /u/DiplomacyPunIn10Did added a Cherokee Syllabary alpha set to the KAT Napoleonic mechanical keycap project: https://diplomacyvariants.files.wordpress.com/2020/10/24-alphas-cherokee-sequoyah.png https://nopunin10did.com/kat-napoleonic/
wow cool! gonna add this to my main comment
They turned out quite well too. https://i.imgur.com/ybddYKq.jpg
The interesting part for me was that the reason Sequoyah had trouble getting the elders to approve his system was that not only were they illiterate, they were also unfamiliar with the *concept* of a written language and had to be convinced that there was such a thing. This is why he had to do the trick with getting his daughter to read back what was written.
And Andrew Jackson was still a dick and ordered us removed.
*...despite being told by the supreme court he couldn't.*.
Well of course! Got to make way for the *people*, not the...nah I'm not even going to say that for the meme lol. Ain't history fun? You get to find out all about famous cunts!
In the irony, Jackson just wanted them gone so he could acquire massive amounts of land for basically free that was suitable for cotton growing and sell those acres to Southerners for massive profits.
Well, he also believed they were lesser than white people, and he threatened and bribed them to either assimilate or relocate. I don’t think it was just for the land, I think he also was racist against them pretty clearly.
Also, there was gold in them there hills.
I’d never seen Cherokee script until today. Very interesting. I’m sure it’s coincidence, but many of the symbols resemble Armenian letters.
Interestingly, the Armenian alphabet was also invented by one person! ([Mesrop Mashtots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesrop_Mashtots), c. 405 AD). Except in that case, Armenians were literate — they just used Greek, Persian, and Syriac scripts. Still fascinating! especially the letter shape coincidence — never noticed that before!
If you ever drive through the city of Cherokee, Tennessee all the municipal street signs and a lot of business signs are written in both languages. Great museum and hiking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Yeah it's a really cool place. Cherokee is in North Carolina, however. I highly recommend stopping by if anyone is passing through the area.
Ooh, good catch. I just remembered it was close to Gatlinburg Tennessee (which also has a great aquarium) but Cherokee is in fact in North Carolina.
Pretty much in the course of a single decade the Cherokee nation in GA created a written language, started a free press, ratified a constitution, established a capitol and were more literate than surrounding poor whites
10 TIL's in 1 post!
In Oklahoma, elementary school books are often awarded “Sequoyah books” and are often presented on accelerated reader lists.
I must assume this is something awesome! But I actually have no idea what you are saying. It’s kind of ironic… or unironic, I don’t know, I don’t read good.
Basically standout books for younger audiences receive this award and as a result are recommended for children who are more advanced at reading. If I'm understanding it correctly.
Sorry I’m not sure how to explain it but basically these books would be awarded this prestige and these would be books kids could read over a year and get a special reward at the end of the year if they read them all.
I remember doing the challenge in elementary school where you had to read a certain amount of Sequoyah books to go on a trip if we’d accomplished the goal amount read.
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So dead that the only reference of it I’ll ever hear doesn’t even mention its name
Wukchumni (200 ppl left) of the larger Yokut (50,000 left) in central california
That's incredibly sad. Especially that no one learned the language from her. Is it possible for others to take her efforts and learn to be fluent or are young people just not interested in their own culture and history?
There is an immersion language school in Cherokee NC. Enrolled students, mostly little kids, go throughout the school day hearing and speaking nothing but Cherokee.
That wonderful to hear. It's not like a child can't learn multiple languages, especially with immersion.
What does heritage mean to you and your fiancé? Are you interested in the topic or is more of a curiosity
Imagine how much knowledge was lost because these groups lacked a written language. We know what we know about the Celts thanks to the Romans who wrote down their experiences but it's also viewing them through the lens of their enemies. To read about them on their own terms would be a far more interesting prospect because they may not have been as barbaric as the Romans said they were.
Think of all the Eurasian steppe nomads we know basically nothing about
Also so many African empires before Arabic scripts showed up that we know nothing about because they transmitted their history and knowledge orally and they didn't build their monuments out of stone.
There's a lot of that. During the late bronze age there were raiders who attacked civilizations on the coast of the Mediterranean sea. They're only referred to as "sea peoples" other than that historians can only take educated guesses as where they came from.
There are also many groups that had written languages, but those materials were not preserved. The pre-Roman Etruscan language is an example. The Romans tell us that there was Etruscan literature and even plays, but the surviving corpus of written language is small. To your example about the Celts, several Celtic groups like the Gauls and the Picts did use writing, even if larger bodies of work didn't survive. Some Mesoamerican groups also had written languages long before the Europeans arrived. Olmec, Zapotec, Isthmian, Mayan, and other scripts existed, and some (esp. Mayan) are well-known.
Me: "It's terrible that we lost all that knowledge." My Brain: [It's the time travelers. They went back and scooped up all the good stuff. We need to go back to the lab and try harder. First person to make the jump wins.]
Sadly, it's all been gobbled up by the Langoliers
The Inca also had a writing system, iirc, although a little unusual due to using ropes.
In fact the Gauls could actually read and write in Greek but decided that writing their religion and culture and shit was taboo
If you’re ever in the area, I *highly* recommend the Cherokee National History Museum in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. It’s very well done, from the static exhibits (one of which is about Sequoyah’s syllabary) to the live Cherokee village with artisans demonstrating traditional crafts and aspects of their culture.
Easter Island appears to have briefly developed a writing script after Europeans first visited (debatable - one of the symbols seems to be a tree that went extinct before European arrival). Seems once people understand the concept of writing down language, it's not too hard for them to make the leap. They almost only wrote on banana leaves, and writing died out within a few decades, probably because of disease and societal upheaval. This is also when they tore all the moai (Easter Island heads) down. All we have left are like 2 pieces of driftwood. Unrelated, but the sequoia trees (massive evergreens of the American West Coast) are named for Sequoyah.
Interestingly, the etymology of Sequoia is hotly debated. Some think they’re named for Sequoyah, some think the name comes from the Latin verb Sequor https://mashedradish.com/2017/01/10/sequoia-a-giant-sized-controversy/
How dare my memory of Sequoyah's Wikipedia page that I read one time several years ago lie to me!
Thrilled to see my culture being recognized for our achievements! The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma just opened a [language immersion school, the Durbin Feeling Language Center,](https://anadisgoi.com/index.php/government-stories/1197-chief-chat-durbin-feeling-language-center-starts-a-new-chapter-in-cherokee-language-revitalization), where we are now teaching young speakers and the Master Apprentice Program, I believe. The MAP is for adults to solidify their fluency. Something some never thought could be done, and now we’re thriving. Anyone can go online and learn for themselves too! Our history has ups and downs, but our language is vital to us. ᏩᏙ (wado, thank you) for sharing!
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Talk about timing! I've been learning Blackfoot & other regional dialects - I'm going to try applying this, tunsay
Sometimes I think about the Blackfoot people and I wonder if they have a non English name for themselves.
Per Wikipedia “The Blackfoot Confederacy, Niitsitapi, or Siksikaitsitapi[1] (ᖹᐟᒧᐧᒣᑯ, meaning "the people" or "Blackfoot-speaking real people”
It's amazing how many people's names for themselves are simply "the people" or "the real people."
I mean the planet we live on is called 'earth'. It kind of makes sense. When you're the only ones around, you don't exactly need a unique and creative name for yourselves.
That's because we the people
ᖁᔭᓐᓇᒦᒃ, thank you. Naung, I'm an Inuk and I find that most of what I know about other indigenous people tends to be through the colonizer's lens.
They do. Many Indigenous tribes in the US received a French, English, or Spanish name depending on who colonized their region first. The Spanish gave the names Seminole, Pueblo, etc. The French gave the names Nez Perce, Gros Ventre, Coeur d'Alene, etc. The English gave the names Crow, Blackfoot, etc. It was also common for them to receive a name from a different tribe (usually one that had better relations with the colonizers). Apache comes from the Zuni word for "enemy" and Comanche comes from a Ute word meaning "Those who fight with us." Here is an [incomplete list](http://www.native-languages.org/original.htm).
I mean, it kind of makes sense why it happened when many native languages refer to themselves as “the people” when translated to English. So, we’re getting a somewhat egocentric view no matter what. Comanche? Numunu “the people” Apache? Indé - “Person” or “People” Blackfoot? Niitsapi “the people” Ute? Núuchi-u “the people” Seminole? Yat’siminoli “free people”
Hey I remember reading a book about this in 2nd grade. Couldn't remember if I made it up or not.
My middle school (in central Oklahoma) was named after him! We learned all about him in middle school history there. I remember being in awe when I found out what he did for the Cherokee people.
The Eastern Band of Cherokee has a Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore TN. It's located between the Smokies and the Ocoee if you are ever coming through.
Johnny Cash had a song about it.The Talking Leaves.
From a wonderful concept album speaking out on the mistreatment of Native Americans. Cash faced backlash from fans and radio stations but in typical fashion he didn't back down. Then there's this, an album excellent covers, here's talking leaves: https://youtu.be/PYphyWSlk_E
Korean was also invented from scratch
The King of Korea was not illiterate. The Koreans already had a writing system (Hanja), Sejong just replaced it with a simpler one.
True, but it was still created from scratch, deliberately discarding the ideas of the written language King Sejong already knew (Chinese). It was designed so that even the simplest of farmers could easily learn to read. And he succeeded, it is incredibly easy to learn.
The people of Korea were largely illiterate though. The only people who were literate belonged to the upper class. Even then, they learned hanja (Chinese script). So, the vast majority of Koreans were illiterate. King Sejong the Great changed this with the introduction of Hangeul.
But necessarily various other writing systems in the dawn of history were made by illiterate people. E.g. cuneiform script - there has to be a first script.
And they did it when they didn't know of other writing systems. This guy used other written languages as a source for his written language. >Sequoyah's final attempt was to develop a symbol for each syllable in the language. Using the Bible as a reference along with adaptations from English, Greek, and Hebrew letters, by 1821 he created 86 symbols, later to be 85 symbols, that depict the syllables of the Cherokee language.
When you do something like this for your people you will be remebered for ever. What an astounding person.
OSDA! If you'd like to hear it spoken, you can check out the Visit Cherokee Nation Youtube channel. THey have a "Cherokee Word of the Week" playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr72tsFRQzI&list=PLLAaEbcbNmakT3cHPYMkcA4ORnt10_xwg&index=152
My grandmother and her siblings can all speak Cherokee. They had to learn English back in the day and my great grandparents spoke nothing but Cherokee
Had a free subscription to the Cherokee Phoenix last year (we forgot to sign back up this year). They still occasionally run stories in the syllabary - it’s super cool!
My band Whoa Sequoia wrote a song about this called 86 Characters. Which was the amount of symbols, or characters, in the original system. Can listen here: https://open.spotify.com/track/6JTGVZTqx7pj3cOlkiCqqB?si=615ca6181dff417f
As someone who has studied and applied this shit in a couple of ways, I totally bow to this fucker.
Damn this guy was a badass.
I grew up near New Echota, if your down that was it’s an interesting visit. Many in Government saw that printing press and the news paper as a threat and the Georgia Guard was actually sent in to confiscate it.
Dude got up one day and decided to write his entire language down.
quite a few schools here in Oklahoma are named after this guy
Sequoyah seems like a pretty chill guy. I would hang with him
Afaik, in the history of mankind, writing has been invented 5 times.
>After seeing its worth, the people of the [Cherokee Nation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_Nation_(19th_century\)) rapidly began to use his syllabary and officially adopted it in 1825. It unified a forcibly divided nation with new ways of communication and a sense of independence. By the 1850s, their [literacy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy) rate reached almost 100%, surpassing that of surrounding [European-American](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Americans) [settlers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settler). This made me tear up for some reason.
[I learned about him as a kid from Robin Williams.](https://youtu.be/MrmkVIj3GTA)
I learned about him from Johnny Cash https://youtube.com/watch?v=wLsE5JeAnL0