Cherokee On A Smartphone: Part Of A Drive To Save A Language

By itself, being able to read smartphone home screens in Cherokee won’t be enough to safeguard the Indigenous language, endangered after a long history of erasure.

But it might be a step toward immersing younger tribal citizens in the language spoken by a dwindling number of their elders.

Benjamin Frey, an American Studies professor at the University of North Carolina, and a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, led the language research behind a new smartphone interface by Lenovo-owned Motorola.

Cherokee leaders have spent several months consulting with Lenovo-owned Motorola, which last week introduced a Cherokee language interface on its newest line of phones.

Now phone users will be able to find apps and toggle settings using the syllable-based written form of the language first created by the Cherokee Nation’s Sequoyah in the early 1800s.