Level 1 Students Get High Marks on Final Exam

Congratulations to all the students in Cherokee NC who passed the Level 1 test with high marks! They have come to class, studied, laughed, and persevered. 

Now they can introduce themselves in Cherokee and talk about their relatives.  They can have a simple conversation on a familiar topic.  They can use all ten of the Cherokee persons as well as saying who is doing the action to someone else.  They can make two tenses—present and command. They can use words for things that are solid, flexible, liquid, long, or living.  They can make sentences negative.  They can make questions with any sentence, and with words like Who? What? Why? Where?  And they can do all this with each of forty verb roots.

This means they have more than a thousand Cherokee word/sentences at their command.  Since each Cherokee word equals an English sentence of three or four words, let’s say they know the equivalent of at least 3500 English words.  They have also learned additional vocabulary for places and things so they can begin to speak more completely. 

USA Today says its readers need to know 3000 English words to read their newspaper.  These students are on their way to speaking Cherokee. Congratulations to these students for being determined to learn their language!  We appreciate you--Ditsvyalihelitseha!