Interesting entry in Glossary of "Myths of the Cherokee"

[ᎹᎦᎵ]

â´siyu´ (abbreviated siyu´) -- good: the common Cherokee salute; gâ´siyu´, "I am good"; hâ´siyu´) -- "thou art good"; â´siyu, "he (it) is good"; âstû, "very good" (intensive)


http://books.google.com/books?id=9HDbWUX71joC&lpg=PA510&ots=xdGlL9rEPU&dq=yu%20suffix%20cherokee&pg=PA510#v=onepage&q=yu%20suffix%20cherokee&f=true

[molbolom]

â ) I'm wondering if that's a spelling of how the Cherokee 'o' sounds. At times it's difficult to discern between 'o' and 'a' because the Cherokee 'o' isn't really an 'o' sound, at least from the materials I've learned from.

<Edit> I should also mention the Norwegian letter for a sound similar to this is an 'a' with a little 'o' above it, 'å'. In the word 'go' it's spelled 'gå' in Norwegian.

[ᎹᎦᎵ]

ran across this:

(From: http://speakcherokee.blogspot.com/)

Osiyo!

One of the question I frequently get is "What does Osiyo actually mean?"

The word is an emphatic variant of "Osiquu," the positive response to the question "Ositsu?"
"Is it well?" / "It is well."

The variant was popular in the 19th century as a closing to written letters. It was an equivalent to "We're all doing well." At a time when a letter from afar often brought bad news, such as a death, it gradually shifted to a salutation. "Don't worry, all's well, relax and enjoy the letter."

As time progressed, it became a spoken greeting, replacing the older "He!" and "Ka!" except in old prayers where the Holy Ones are being addressed. The late language instructor Sam Hider used to say that osiyo was the only proper greeting in Cherokee. In recent years, those whose first language is English have sought and created other greetings, such as "Osda sunalei" for good morning. However, that is really a statement of condition, and could equally be translated "The morning is good."

My own pet peeve is the practice of placing an unnecessary apostrophe in the word: O'siyo. An apostrophe indicates a place where letter had been dropped. In can't, the apostrophe shows where the letters n-o in cannot have been dropped. Yet in osiyo, nothing has been dropped. I could understand someone who speak with the Kituwa "sh" sound using os'iyo to replace the missing h.
What I think happened is that when the first widely-distributed book on the language, Holmes & Smith's Beginning Cherokee was published in the early Seventies, the font used the same character for apostrophe and accent, making Ósiyo look identical to O'siyo. I don't recall seeing it before that, and haven't found it in any earlier written resource.

A language is a living thing, so changes occur frequently. Perhaps "Osda sunalei" will gradually gain acceptance, and "O'siyo" will look less annoying.

Thought you'd like to know some of the background of one of the most common expressions!

Donadagohvi,
Brian Wilkes

[molbolom]

That explains a lot then. I had suspicions long ago when I first learned about many aspects of the word osi and the suffix -yvi, plus the findings of -yui in place of it.

osi = Good (Not stove, hah)
This word can be used with the Set A pronouns. So, gosi = I am good, hosi = Horsey (Nah, just kidding, it means "You're good"), and so on so forth.

Though, I'm unsure as to the difference between osda and osi, but something deep down inside my psyche seems to think they're identical.

Here's all the variants that I've seen over the years of Osda, osi...

osda, osdi, osd, tsosd, tsosdi, tsosda, anosdi, anosda, anosd, unosda, unosdi, unosd (There's a chance the the unosda variations were just because of either a memory getting crossed with other words, or that anosda sounds an awful lot like unosda under certain circumstances)

osiyvi, osiyui, osvnvi, wosvnvi, wosiyui, wosiyvi. (Again some of these maybe non-memories)

All the following variations would make sense to me and I could be able to read them without any trouble, although not all of them would be a correct usage.

osdiyv, osdiyu, osdvna, osdidike, osdike
wosdiyv, wosdiyu, wosdvna, wosdidike, wosdike

osiyv, osiyu, osvnv, osvna
wosiyv, wosiyu, wosvnv, wosvna