Cherokee Verbs & Pronouns
Cherokee "h-stem" Verbs
Verb Root Stems Beginning With an "h" Sound
Every verb page on this website shows at the top the most basic part that a Cherokee verb can be broken down to - the "root" or "stem". This is the barest nubbin of the verb possible before pronouns and suffixes are added to make it usable. Every verb must have at least a pronoun prefix and a modal, or tense, suffix. There are also other prefixes that can be added to enhance the meaning of the verb to show things like direction, possibility, some types of negation, and other enhancements to the verb. And then there are suffixes to show tense and other tweaks to the meaning.
Sometimes if the verb root begins with can require or cause changes to some of the pronoun prefixes to attach to it. The most common ones are fairly straight forward and there are many verb roots in the verb section of this website that begin with consonants and others that begin with vowels that illustrate a couple of the most basic changes. Verb roots that begin with vowels and don't need the extra vowel to "glue" the pronoun at the beginning but verb roots that begin with consonants require a vowel between them and the pronouns (usually “i”) and there are plenty of examples for these verbs on this website.
Some special cases cause other changes to the pronouns and this page
is to introduce one of them, the so-called "h-stem" verbs.
Verbs that belong to this class can be a bit daunting because of the
the “h” or aspiration sound on the front of the verb root causes
changes in some instances. For shorthand, these verbs are referred to
as “h-stem verbs”. This initial “h” with some
pronouns undergoes a process called "h metathesis", meaning that with
some pronouns, this “h” moves around, gets pulled from the root into a
pronoun prefix and causes pronunciation changes. Cook discusses this
phenomenon in much more detail in his 1979 dissertation on pages 39 -
40 (Section 2.4.0) and has example paradigms (conjugations) beginning
on page 41, Section 2.5.0.
Note! ALL Animate Object pronouns trigger "h" alteration! Montgomery-Anderson states this several times in his 2015 Cherokee Reference Grammar. See also Pronouns III - Animate Object Pronouns.
In some verbs, the "ga-" 3rd person singular pronoun (he, she, or it) is changed from a "ga-" sound to a "ka-". The “h” is pulled from the beginning of the root into the pronoun to turn the softer “g” into a harder sounding “k”, so "Ꭶ" becomes "Ꭷ". Some of the pronunciation changes, however, aren’t reflected in the Cherokee syllabary. For example “agi-” (Set B “I”) changes to “aki-” but the "Ꭹ" syllable represents both the “gi” and “ki” sounds. Another change that happens is that the “tsa-” or “ja-” (Set B, “you” singular) pronoun becomes a harder sound, too, “tsha-“ (pronounced like “ch” in Charlie). Note that the same syllable "Ꮳ" represents both sounds.
Other pronouns that cause this alternation change usually involve the 1st person (I, we). Cook’s pronoun chart in his dissertation has the pronouns that trigger this change marked with an asterisk (*).
These fairly complex details are usually avoided or ignored in beginner texts. William Cook has the best discussion of the subject in his 1979 dissertation although it is fairly dense reading with a lot of academic linguistic terms. He also used a transcription that was common in the 70’s in academia but not so much for teaching Cherokee, especially beginner’s Cherokee. Transcriptions throughout culturev.com Cherokee website are based on those used by Durbin Feeling in his workhorse "Cherokee-English Dictionary" (1975) and also as found in "Beginning Cherokee" by Holmes/Smith (1977, 5th printing 1989).
Some h-stem verbs on this website are:
close it
crave it
need it
tell it