OSAT Cherokee (OK179) flashcards
OSAT Cherokee (OK179) · Build recall with a focused review session.
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- Cherokee language family
- Cherokee is an Iroquoian language, most closely related to Tuscarora; it is not Muskogean, despite being spoken in the Southeast historically.
- Sequoyah
- Creator of the Cherokee syllabary, completed around 1821; his Cherokee name is George Guess/Gist, and the syllabary was adopted by the Cherokee Nation in 1825.
- Syllabary size
- The Cherokee syllabary has 85 characters (some counts list 86 with the added 'mv' sign), each representing a syllable rather than a single sound.
- Cherokee tone
- Cherokee is a tonal language with high and low tones; tone is marked with diacritics in pedagogical spelling and can distinguish otherwise identical words.
- Vowel length
- Cherokee contrasts short and long vowels, and length is phonemic; long vowels are often written doubled or with a colon in linguistic notation.
- Glottalized consonants
- Cherokee has glottalized stops and affricates (tʼ, kʼ, tsʼ) that contrast with plain and aspirated series, and learners must hear the difference.
- No labial stops
- Cherokee lacks English p and b; the 'qu' sound is a labialized velar (/kʷ/ or /ɡʷ/), so English loanwords are adapted.
- Polysynthetic verbs
- Cherokee verbs can carry subject, object, aspect, and adverbial meaning in one word, so listening requires tracking whole verb units.
- Inclusive/exclusive we
- Cherokee first-person plural distinguishes 'we (you and I)' from 'we (they and I)', a contrast that listening tasks often test.
- Classificatory verbs
- Cherokee handling verbs use different roots for round objects, long objects, living things, and liquids; listeners must match root to object.
- Aspect over tense
- Cherokee verbs often mark completed vs. ongoing aspect more centrally than tense, so time is inferred from aspect plus context.
- Osiyo and wado
- 'Osiyo' (ᎣᏏᏲ) is a common Cherokee greeting, and 'wado' (ᏩᏙ) means thank you; both are high-frequency classroom vocabulary.
- Syllabic consonant s
- The Cherokee sign Ꮝ represents 's' without a following vowel, an unusual feature among syllabaries.
- Unicode Cherokee block
- Cherokee is encoded in Unicode in the Cherokee block (U+13A0–U+13FF), with lowercase forms added later for case-aware software compatibility.
- Cherokee Phoenix
- Founded in 1828 at New Echota, the Cherokee Phoenix was printed partly in the syllabary and is a landmark in Indigenous-language print literacy.
- Trail of Tears
- The forced removal of Cherokee and other southeastern nations in 1838–1839 from the Southeast to Indian Territory, with high mortality.
- Three recognized tribes
- The Cherokee Nation (Tahlequah, OK), United Keetoowah Band (Tahlequah, OK), and Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (Cherokee, NC) are the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes.
- Cherokee clans
- Seven traditional Cherokee clans are matrilineal, and clan identity remains culturally significant in contemporary Cherokee communities.
- Cherokee National Holiday
- Held Labor Day weekend in Tahlequah, it commemorates the 1839 Cherokee constitution and includes cultural events.
- Immersion school
- The Cherokee Immersion Charter School in Tahlequah uses Cherokee as the medium of instruction, with English introduced later as a subject.
- Master-Apprentice model
- A revitalization method pairing a fluent elder with an adult learner for intensive daily oral interaction in everyday activities, without textbooks.
- Total Physical Response
- A command-based listening method widely used in Cherokee instruction because verb morphology is acquired through action and response rather than drills.
- Backward design
- A curriculum approach that starts from the desired oral performance goal, then selects the vocabulary and structures needed to reach it.
- Comprehensible input
- Cherokee immersion instruction maximizes Cherokee input through visuals, gestures, and repetition rather than translation into English.
- Recast correction
- A feedback strategy in which the teacher repeats the learner's utterance in the correct Cherokee form rather than explaining grammar explicitly.
- Environmental print
- Classroom labels, schedules, and word walls written in the Cherokee syllabary that support decoding and literacy development.
- Oral proficiency rubric
- A speaking assessment scale for Cherokee that rates pronunciation (tone, vowel length, glottal stop), fluency, vocabulary range, and cultural appropriateness.
- Interrater reliability
- The consistency of scores across raters; Cherokee oral assessments should be scored by more than one fluent speaker for high-stakes decisions.
- Portfolio assessment
- A collection of student work over time, used in Cherokee programs to document growth in syllabary reading and writing.
- New Kituwah Academy
- The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians' immersion school, independent of the Cherokee Nation's language programs.
- Cherokee Nation Language Department
- The tribal department that runs immersion, master-apprentice, and translation services and maintains the tribe's official orthography.
- Five C's standards
- Communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities: a standards framework adapted for Cherokee and other Indigenous language programs.