A Grammar and Dictionary of the Cherokee Language

Alternate Language Names

Tsalagi (ᏣᎳᎩ), ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ, Tsalagi Gawonihisdi, Giduwa.

Region

North Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma, and California, United States.

Who

Duane Harold King.

Others Involved

Annie Jessan, Laura King, Robert Bushyhead, Sim Jessan, Golinda Hill, Charles Crowe, Betty Lossiah, Lawrence Calhoun (Speakers); James M. Crawford, Charles Hudson, Wilfrid Bailey, Michael Olein, Don Smith (Thesis Committee); William Cook (Linguistic Assistance); William Bass, Bruce Delaney (Computational Assistance); Louise Brice (Typing); National Science Foundation (Funding).

Publishing Information

Published in 1975 by the University of Georgia as part of a Ph.D. thesis.

How People are Cited

People, such as speakers and other contributors to the project, are listed in the Introduction.

How Information is Cited

Speakers and other contributors are cited in the Introduction. Previously published materials are cited in the References list.

Where is Information Coming from

Information in this dictionary comes from speakers who worked with the author during the early 1970s as part of a larger study comparing Cherokee, Alabama, and Yuchi. The author also received information from other linguistic researchers documenting the Cherokee language in the same time period, including William Pulte, Lawrence Foley, William Cook, and Willard Walker, as well as previously published materials as listed in the References section.

Tools and Framework used

This dictionary is available as both a physical and digital book.

Access

The physical version of this dictionary is accessible through libraries. The online version (a digitized PDF) is accessible through ProQuest with purchase or an institutional login. We are unable to confirm the purchase price. The first 24 pages are available open access on ProQuest.

Included Languages and Directionality

Cherokee to English; English to Cherokee.

Dialects Included

This dictionary contains information from the Qualla Boundary, the federally-recognized territory of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Therefore, this dictionary contains information from the Eastern (i.e., Middle, Kituhwa, or ᎩᏚᏩ) dialect of Cherokee.

Type of Dictionary

This is a bilingual, bidirectional root and stem dictionary.

How are Entries Organised

Cherokee is a polysynthetic language, where one Cherokee word translates into an English sentence. Because of the complexity of representing polysynthetic languages in a resource like a dictionary, the author worked to create a system to adequately communicate the variety of morphemic combinations. The final printed result is a table where each row is an entry.

Entries are organized alphabetically by Cherokee (according to the alphabet included in the Instructions on Reading the Dictionary) in the Cherokee – English portion of the dictionary. There are ten columns per page in this section of the dictionary. For verb entries, the columns include information about the verb stem, the root or suffix designation, the five aspect suffixes, a concise English translation, and two pronominal prefixes to indicate verb class. Noun entries do not contain information in all ten columns, and instead contain the noun root, two personal prefixes, commonly used plurals, and the English translation.

Entries are organized alphabetically by English in the English – Cherokee portion of the dictionary. There are eight columns per page in this section of the dictionary. The columns include the English word, the Cherokee gloss, the root or suffix designation, and aspect suffixes (for verbs) or personal prefixes (for nouns).

Preceding the dictionary there is a thorough grammatical description of Cherokee, including information about the language’s history, phonology (i.e., sound system), word types, word structure, affixes, meaning and sentence structure, and cultural language.

Other Features

Other Notes

The digital version of this dictionary is a scanned PDF of the original physical version. Due to scanning blemishes, this dictionary can be difficult to read at times.

ᎪᎸᏅᏱ ᏣᎳᎩ-ᏲᏁᎦ ᏗᏕᎶᏆᏍᏙᏗ – Raven Rock Cherokee-English Dictionary (2015) by Michael Joyner and TommyLee Whitlock is a reformatted version of this dictionary.

The Cherokee-English Dictionary Online Database (launched in 2014) by the CED-Online Project Development Team includes Joyner and Whitlock’s reformatted version of this dictionary in the database.