Name: Hery Shah
TA’s Name: Madeline Discussion day and time: Monday – 11:00-11:50
Endanger Languages in 21st Century
There are thousands of languages spoken by people in the world, but more than half of them are at risk of becoming extinct. Many of the languages are at risk because there are only so many people speaking the language. Many languages are at risk of becoming extinct because they are not common to learn among people. Many people tend to use second language instead of using primary language. People find second language as more important than their native language because they are surround by the people who speaks the second language. After doing some research …show more content…
Cherokee The Cherokee people used to live all around the world, but during early 1800s president Jackson ordered US army to forcefully remove Cherokee people from their hometown. Cherokee people started to immigrate to the southeast part of USA such as Oklahoma and Omaha. After they were forced to move, Cherokee started a trail, which was later known as “Trail of Tears.” The journey to the southeast was 850 miles long and it caused 4000 deaths. During the journey many people escaped from the group. After escaping the trail people who escaped and created a small group and created their own government with new laws and chiefs. The group had their own leaders, government and laws. They also had a chief named George Gist. He was also known as Sequoyah. He was the leader of the group. He decided to create a common (written) language so every one in his new group can communicate with written language. Therefore in early 1800s the chief Sequoyah started to develop a new language and named it Cherokee syllabary language. It took chief Sequoyah about 13 years to develop the entire alphabet for the new syllabary language. The Cherokee syllabary is the only language, which was created by one person. One person created the entire alphabet. The Cherokee is part of Iroquoian language. After it was fully developed people started to use the language and as of today there are about 22,000 active Cherokee speakers. When Sequoyah created the language there were about 350,000 people who were able to speak the language. As the years passed on there was a decrease in amount of people who spoke the language. In late 1850s 75% of the people spoke the language and by 2005 it went down to