Monday, March 9, 2015

Reading Diary A: Cherokee Stories

ᎣᏏᏲ! That's hello in Cherokee, pronounced osiyo (oh-see-yo). It wasn't even a question what unit I was going to pick for this week, as soon as I saw Cherokee Stories I knew what I had to do! 

I don't think I'm gonna go too in-depth on the stories this time, but I did want to see how the language compared to the language I've learned. I spent 3 semesters learning Cherokee as my foreign language, which in reality won't really help me in the future, but I'm terrible at Spanish, and I heard French is hard. So I chose Cherokee and it was one of the best decisions I made because the professor was my favorite professor at OU so far, besides possibly Al Eschbach. 

The first use of actual Cherokee names starts at the first story, How the World Was Made. Now, I learned lots of words and phrases. But never have I seen Cherokee phonetically written like this name -- Gälûñ'lätï. I don't even know how to pronounce that. Semi-related, my Cherokee name was ᏌᎶᎵ, which is pronounced saloli (sah-low-lee), and means squirrel! We got to pick our own names, so after I got stuck trying to pick a name, I asked a girl at a party I was at and the first thing she said was squirrel. So that became my name for 3 semesters! 

These phonetic differences could be because of the inconsistencies in how Cherokee is pronounced. Like most languages, there are dialects that change based on where you live. So it could just be the way the dialect of these people was spoken. Although after a quick search, the pronunciations used in the Cherokee Dikaneisdi (dee-ka-nay-ees-dee) or word list. So that would explain the pronunciation.




I did like how most of the stories were animal based, like Why the Possum's Tail is Bare. We didn't learn a lot of history in my classes, but we did learn how most of the main animals are said in the language. I do know they were a big part of Cherokee culture. That is clearly reflected in their legends. 

I'm gonna save my analysis on individual stories for tomorrow's post, I wanted to switch up my reading diary this time! 

! (Till I see you again)
The pronunciation for the above is, by syllable or character (each character is one syllable), doe-nah-dah-go-huh-ee. Cherokees say till we meet again, or till I see you again rather than goodbye because goodbye implies you won't see each other again, while they believe they'll see each other again regardless of if it's this life or the next. 

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