Some of my newer readers may not know what Udugi is, so I'll explain.
For several years, I was concerned about the decline in the number of Cherokee-speakers. The language had about 26,000 speakers in 1980,, but is said to have about 12,000 today. The best speakers are quite old, so it is likely that truly fluent speakers number only in the hundreds. This struck me as incredibly sad. I've seen this movie before, and I know how it ends.
I've studied many languages, including indigenous ones, and I can tell you that Cherokee is unquestionably the most grammatically complex language I've ever studied. They say that if you don't speak it from the cradle, you don't speak it.
I thought about all this for some years, without finding any solution to the problem. At some point, though, I realized that it would be better to save some part of it than to lose the whole thing. I thought the vocabulary could probably be saved, but saw no hope for the survival of the incredibly complex grammar.
I went to work on a constructed language, based on Cherokee vocabulary and a simple, Esperanto-like grammar. I found a way of seamlessly joining the vocabulary to the grammar, and did it within the restrictive phonology of the Cherokee language and writing system. The name of the new language is Udúgi, which means "hope."
To make a long story shorter, I've used the language for a couple of years now, and it functions very well. I've translated some of my poetry into it, and written some original poetry in it. I hope to translate more literature into Udugi soon, and as I do it, it will appear in this blog.
As always, I would like to thank you all for your continued interest and enthusiasm. Thank you, merci, gracias, obrigado. Wadó, ꮹꮩ.
Text and image © 2020 by Donald C. Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler, ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.
