Fun fact: Both Cherokee and English can express yes/no with "grunts." In fact, it's the normal way to do it in Cherokee. But the Cherokee grunt for "yes" sounds more like the English grunt for "no." So I would not assume that one comes from the other.
The normal way to say yes in Cherokee is (phonetically) uh-uh. This is written "v v" in Roman letters, or "ꭵ ꭵ" in Cherokee script. The pronunciation, though, is "v: v'" (Ꭵ: Ꭵ'). This means that the first part is lengthened, and the second part has a stress accent. The English "grunt," which has only been used in writing since about 1899, has an "h" sound at the beginning of the second part; the Cherokee does not, but at least the stress accent is similar.
In English the "no" grunt (which has only been used in writing since about 1924) is differentiated from the "yes" grunt by having a strong glottal stop (the sound of the "tt" in the Cockney pronunciation of "bottle") at the beginning of each part, and no "h" sound.
Fun but irrelevant fact: English has another grunt, "uh-oh," an expression of dismay, which has only been used in writing since about 1971.
It appears that in Cherokee pitch is moving toward becoming a stress accent. Neither pitch nor stress accent has ever been part of Sequoyah's syllabary, which I also use for Udugi. Pitch is not recognized in Udugi, but the stress accent on a word can change its meaning, as it also can in Cherokee. For example, ama' is water, but a'ma is salt. So, when it is important, I'll represent some stress accents with an apostrophe. Ꮀ:Ꮹ'? ᏩᏙ'.
In an attempt to make Udugi a little more Cherokee-like, I'll also start allowing omission of the copula (the verb "to be") in some sentences where it is unlikely to cause confusion. Example: hia wesa. (ᎯᎠ ᏪᏌ). ("This is a cat.")
ᏩᏙ
