Cherokee/Pairs
< Cherokee
"Critical pairs" is a concept that may help you remember certain vocabulary by emphasizing the typically one-to-two correspondence between some English and Cherokee terms. In other words, a critical pair refers to either the two ways in Cherokee that a single concept in English is expressed, or the one way that two English concepts are expressed in Cherokee. The number two is not important—it could be three or even more. The point is that you should ideally be conscious of the cases in which the correspondence of terms between the two languages is not one-to-one.
| English Terms | Cherokee Term | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| table, chair | gaasgilo | locative: gaasgilv4qi |
| English Term | Cherokee Terms | Basis of Split | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| sleep | lh (Ga, G, ss) [íh, vv́na, ih, NA, vnhd]; hlín (A, sp) [-, NA, -, NA, NA] | Singular and plural use different roots. | Aspiration class for hlín is unclear but irrelevant, though underlyingly it probably mirrors lh's G (glottal) class and thus might be better spelled lhín. |