Accentuation in Udugi

For at least forty years now, pitch has been in rapid decline in the Cherokee language, and it seems that a purely stress accent is taking its place. Udugi, for its part, does not use pitch at all, and only uses stress. A few simple rules will help to put the stress accent where it should go.

The most "comfortable" place for the accent in Udugi is the next-to-last syllable. For example, the tense-endings on verbs, -ase, -ise, -ose, and -use (present, past, future,and conditional) all accent the first vowel of the tense-ending: -áse, -íse, -óse, and úse, which puts the accent on the next-to-last syllable of the word. Words yhaving the objective-case ending, -ne, have the stress accent on the previous vowel, the penultimate syllable. Many words that end in -isdi, or -isgi are also accented on the penultimate syllable. BUT final syllables containing an "o" vowel are accented. Examples: osiyó (hello) and wadó (thank you). The preference for accenting the "o" vowel is so strong that it can even pull the accent to the first or other syllable. Examples: nóquisi, tiyóhali. As a general rule, it is a good idea to accent any syllable that contains an "o" or the vowel "v" (which is also nasalized, by the way). Examples: tsilV, atsilV (I can't type an accent mark over that vowel).

And finally, many three-syllable words that do not contain either the vowel "o" or the vowel "v" are accented on the first syllable. Examples: tsálagi, údugi.

In writing, no one will know if you're accenting the wrong syllable, because we don't write accents. In a way, it's too bad that we don't write them, because "amá" means water, but "áma" means salt. You just have to interpret such cases from the context.

I hope this helps. If you have a question, you can put it into a comment/comentario. Thanks.