Ebook: Beginning Cherokee

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date: 1977
Pages: 349
ISBN: 0-8061-1463-0This book, the first of its kind, teaches the rudiments of Cherokee, which is the native tongue of about 20,000 Americans, although most of those who speak it use it only as a second language. Cherokee has had several recognized dialects in the past. The two main dialects today are the North Carolina, spoken on the Qualla Reservation by about 3,000 persons, and the Oklahoma, or Western, which is a concensus of the different ways of speech among the Cherokees mingled there after their removal from the East in the 1830s. This book uses the Oklahoma dialect.