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Cherokee Language

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Gerardo Mateos TA: Vineeta Chand Lin 1-Sec A06 17 May 2004 Cherokee: An Endangered Language In the United States, an emphasize in learning the dominant language, English for example, can inevitably put other languages within the country in extinction. In reality, there are many other spoken languages in the United Sates, like those spoken by Native Americans, that are becoming endangered because of the immensity of more used languages. One may ask, what is an endangered language? According to Michael Cahill (Bonvillain), who has studied and researched many different endangered languages around the world, a language is endangered when "it is in fairly eminent danger of dying out." Cahill states two ways to quickly identify when a …show more content…

Therefore the subject of the first sentence can only be "boy." By the same reasoning the subject of the second sentence must be "dogs," since the pronominal prefix ani- indicates that the subject is plural and the object is singular (Native Languages). "Five categories of aspect suffixes are discernible in Cherokee grammar: present, imperfective, perfective, imperative, and infinitive" (Cherokee Nation). The present-aspect suffixes says that the action of the verb is happening at the time of the utterance. The imperfective suffixes show lack of completive action in either the future or past. The perfective suffixes show completive action either future or past. The imperative suffixes are employed for immediate past action. As of the infinitives, they don't have a temporal association (Native Languages). A suffix occurs in final position in all Cherokee verbs. With the exception of the suffixes added to the present and imperative stems, no class distinction is recognized by the modals. Seven of the eleven modal suffixes can be added to either the perfective or imperfective stems. Cherokee also has classificatory verbs that convey not only action but the nature of the object or recipient of the action—for example, whether that object is round, flexible, long and rigid, liquid, or animate. More than forty sets of classificatory verbs have been identified. All words that contain two or more morphemes are subject to morphophonemic rules.

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