Beginning Cherokee

Rating:
Summary: Great Comprehensiveness...Comprehensive Greatness!
Review: I am a Foreign Language Major in California. I bought this book awhile ago, and even though my Latin studies defer me from studying Cherokee, I've retained most of what I've learned, which is good for me because there are no Classses to avail in California. The language is not an easy one, but you dont even notice it's difficulty, due to the Comprehensive structure. I feel it is greatest for available for Beginners. The only problem is a lack of more entertaining exercises, which do allow for a better retension. it is to a form, as is the form of learning a Classical Language (i.e. Latin). Audio Cassettes to accompany are also available.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely the best resource of its type.
Review: I began learning Cherokee with this book over a decade ago. Growing up in Illinois, I didn't have a Cherokee community around that I could learn from. Over the years this book has became absolutely invaluable to me. I have read almost all the Cherokee language books written, and this is definitely one of the best. When I finally did get to Oklahoma to work on my Master's, I was actually able to talk to Cherokees in Cherokee largely through the rules of grammar, sentence structure, etc. that this book taught me. I also learned the syllabary through this book. Well worth a look.

Rating:
Summary: osdadv!
Review: I began learning Cherokee with this book over a decade ago. Growing up in Illinois, I didn't have a Cherokee community around that I could learn from. Over the years this book has became absolutely invaluable to me. I have read almost all the Cherokee language books written, and this is definitely one of the best. When I finally did get to Oklahoma to work on my Master's, I was actually able to talk to Cherokees in Cherokee largely through the rules of grammar, sentence structure, etc. that this book taught me. I also learned the syllabary through this book. Well worth a look.

Rating:
Summary: Beggars can't be choosers
Review: Of the limited selection of Cherokee language materials available, this is by far the best and most comprehensive. Having said as much, we must acknowledge its many weak points. The chapters in this book are chock full of vocabulary, but the words, phrases and chapters are presented in a way that keeps each unit more or less isolated from the others. There is no real cohesive progression. In addition, the vocabulary of the book is very noun oriented. Cherokee is a very 'verb language'. After much study with this book, you are likely to know many, many words and still be generally confused as to how to create your own sentences from them. The book doesn't devote enough time to teaching the all important and challenging (to european language speakers) verb prefixes and suffixes. This book also lacks units that allow the study of the language beyond one word or phrase. Some paragraphs or stories would have been useful if they were appropriately graded. The text has several typos which cause some confusion. The syllabary is introduced, but the book never abandons phonetic spellings. Yet inspite of these many shortcomings, this text is a must for any serious student of the cherokee language. It also might be of interest to those interested in contrastive linguistics.

Rating:
Summary: The best of the bunch
Review: There are very few resources from which to learn Cherokee, and this is the best of the bunch. That being said, it is not perfect.

It seems to be a pretty amateur work, put together by someone with very little knowledge of the theory of learning languages. I have no doubt that this is indeed the case, and I am very grateful to Ms. Holmes for writing this manual, but I do wish that the publishers had perhaps hired a linguist to work with her. There is little cohesion between chapters, and I did not feel that the lessons built on the previous ones.

I think that this book would be very good in a classroom setting, where an instructor can add some more structure to the lessons. A student learning Cherokee on his or her own will probably have some more trouble, but this is still the very best book to use.

I don't see the tapes being sold on Amazon, but I did purchase them at a local language bookstore, and I would recomend not buying them. It seems that they are for a previous edition... many of the lessons do not match up with the book, and they resulted in creating a great deal of confusion for me.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely the best resource of its type.
Review: This is the best primer on both spoken and written Cherokee. There have been other attempts to write language instruction in Cherokee; all the others that I have seen are too complex...attempting to teach too much, too fast.
Cherokee is so unlike English, in terms of grammar and syntax, that learning the language is difficult; however, the difficulty is minimized by starting slowly and building vocabulary first. The optional accompanying cassettes should be a big help.
One caveat: this book teaches the dialect common in Oklahoma. Eastern Cherokee is slightly different, but if you learn the western dialect, folks in North Carolina will be able to understand you.

Rating:
Summary: great introduction to cherokee.
Review: we use this book in my intro to cherokee class. i especially like the fact that it integrates the syllabary, as we do not yet do that in my class. however, it could use more exercises to check comprehension.