Cherokee

About Cherokee

Cherokee, Tsalagi in the language itself, is the language of the Cherokee people, spoken mainly in northeastern Oklahoma and in western North Carolina. It is the only Southern Iroquoian language still spoken. Ethnologue counted about 12,300 speakers in 2010, most of them older, and UNESCO lists it as severely endangered. The Cherokee Nation and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians run immersion schools to pass it on.

Cherokee has its own writing system, a syllabary created by Sequoyah in the early 1800s, in which each of about 85 symbols stands for a syllable. The guides give the words in Latin letters as well, and spellings can differ from one source to another. The common greeting is osiyo (hello).

FamilyIroquoian, Southern Iroquoian
Speakersabout 12,300 (2010)
Where spokenUnited States (Oklahoma, North Carolina)
Statusseverely endangered (UNESCO)
ScriptCherokee syllabary, Latin letters
Codechr (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: Ethnologue (2010), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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