Cherokee--more properly spelled Tsalagi--is an Iroquoian language with an innovative written syllabary invented by the Cherokee scholar Sequoyah. It is spoken by about 22,000 people primarily in Oklahoma and North Carolina. Though Cherokee is one of the healthier Indian languages of North America and the one in which the most literature being published, it is still in imperilled condition because of government policies as late as the fifties which enforced the removal of Cherokee children from Tsalagi-speaking homes, reducing the number of young Cherokees being raised bilingually from 75% to less than 5% today.
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