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”.
Tags: infixes
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).
- Ꮒ- + Ꮥ- becomes ᏂᏗ-
☞ The Ꮒ- prefix can indicate “next to the speaker’s point of reference in a lateral position”.
In the “Cherokee-English Dictionary”, this point of reference is called “the speaker’s position”.
In the “A Reference Grammar of Oklahoma Cherokee”, this point of reference is called “the deictic center”.
In many cases the prefix “nị-” is used to indicate “beside” or “next to”.
Assume the point of reference is in relation to the speaker unless context indicates otherwise.
This is used to refer to the point of time just before an event.
Use the Immediate Future suffix “-ᎢᏕᎾ” and “Set B” pronoun prefixes on the Past Tense form.
Related to the previous discussion for “Going To” is the related idea of doing something when doing another thing. There are three main forms which cover “when he goes he does”, “when he went he did”, and “when he goes he will” which will be shown by example.