Categories: grammar

Use “Ꮭ” and add the prefix “Ᏹ-”.

• Ᏹ- + Ꮥ- becomes ᏱᏗ-

Examples:

See also “Able to… ” and “Able to if”.

For negative conditional ability, take the Immediate Tense stem and add “Ꮭ” and use prefix “ᏴᎦ-”

ᏞᏍᏗ… Ꮵ-

To indicate a negative command:

Use the word “ᏞᏍᏗ (hle²sti)” and add the prefix “Ꮵ- (ji²-)” to the Immediate Tense stem.

If you take the Infinitive form and add a high falling tone on its rightmost long vowel you imply a “need to do” something. Knowing exactly where to add this tone requires experience listening to long timer speakers of the language. ☞ You can indicate that it is a “must do” instead of a “need do” by adding the word ᎠᏎ “a²se”.

Related to the idea of “more” and “most” is the idea of “more than usual”. In English this can be expressed by phrases like “really loud”, “extra hard”, “really bad”, “especially good”, and so forth.

• -Ꮢ⁴Ꭲ
  [-sv⁴ɂi] “More than usual.”

There are several different ways in Cherokee to express the idea of “more” and “most” when talking about attributes like color or size. Here are some of these ways:

By adding both the prefix “yị-” and the word ᎡᎵᏊ [e²li⁴gwu] “It’s possible” to the Recent Past form you create the new meaning of “Might be about to”, “Could do.”, or “May do.”.

If you want to indicate something is “less” or “least” it is common to use the words “ᎦᏲᏟᎨᎢ” (smaller) and “ᏫᎦᏲᏢᎢ” (smallest).