Let's Learn Cherokee - Grammar Practice

How My Students Inspire Me

Through their desire to help others.

One day while using keynote to do basic transitions of their spelling words, my students began to recognize a difference in each of the words that they had been given throughout the month, and how they were slightly similar.

One of my students serendipitously stumbled upon the animation, Magic Move. This animation made it where parts of the word shifted onto the next slide, which lead to less typing for them. Recognizing what they were doing, made me realize that I could make a template for them to utilize to begin understanding that each word had a root, and with only minor changes to the word, they would be able to refer to various other people. They were mystified. They began using this technique to better communicate in the Cherokee language.

So they began the journey of documenting their own dialects of Cherokee, by recording their voices syllable, by syllable, to ensure that other may be able to hear the Cherokee language spoken, not only documented in text. Keynote has been our one best thing in ᏔᎵᏁ ᏗᏂᏂᏙᎯ ᏣᎳᎩ ᏧᎾᏕᎶᏆᏍᏗ, and seeing them develop proficiency in such a useful education tool, at such an early age is inspiring.  

In this screen recorded video, I've laid out the way that students have been utilizing Magic Move in order to better help them understand first, second, and third personal pronouns. In Cherokee there are no gendered nouns, only pronominal prefixes that convey person being spoken of, in reference to the speaker. Magic Move has been such a helpful tool in Cherokee Language Arts, because polysynthetic languages require a ton of movement from different parts of a word. Essentially each word is an idea, sentence, sometimes even a paragraph, using very few words. It would be categorically recognized as a level 4 language, and this has exponentially helped our students identify who is being spoken too, and has been a meaningful teaching tool to implement.

The words spoken here are the words for:

"I am learning, You are learning, and They (singular) are learning."

Also my students have been using color code in order to recognize 1st (Red), 2nd (Blue), or 3rd (Yellow) person words.

ᏩᏙ ᎢᏣᏕᎶᏆᎠ ᎦᏲᏟ ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ, ᎤᏚᎩ ᎠᏮᏂ ᏭᎪᏓ ᏧᏂᏁᎯᏯ ᏓᏂᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ ᎢᏣᏕᎶᏆᏍᏗ ᏱᏣᏚᎵᎭ.

Thank ya'll for learning a little Cherokee language, I hope you'll want to learn more indigenous languages.