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Google search now supports Cherokee (ᏣᎳᎩ)
March 25, 2011
With the help of Cherokee Nation staff and community members, we’ve added
Cherokee (ᏣᎳᎩ) as an interface language
on Google, making a small contribution towards preserving one of the world’s endangered languages.
You can now select Cherokee as your default from the
Language Tools page
(available from the right of the search box), and the entire Google interface will transform into Cherokee:
We’ve also included an
on-screen Cherokee keyboard
on the search page through the
Google Virtual Keyboard API
. This makes it easier for people to search web content in Cherokee without a physical Cherokee keyboard. To access the keyboard, simply click the icon at the right side of the search box.
Cherokee
is an Iroquoian language spoken by the Cherokee people. The
Cherokee syllabary writing system
was developed by
Sequoyah
in the early 19th century. He realized the power of writing systems, and wanted his people to benefit from that power. Some of the 85 characters he developed for his syllabary were modified from his original handwritten script for a printing press in the 1820s, resulting in characters that resemble Latin and Greek letters. Despite the resemblance, they are pronounced differently. The modified script was quickly adapted for printing Cherokee newspapers, books and pamphlets. The adoption and use of the script enabled the Cherokee people to maintain their language and culture. Today, Cherokee is spoken mostly in the states of Oklahoma and North Carolina. (The Cherokee Nation is the sovereign operating government of the Cherokee people. It is a federally recognized tribe of more than 300,000 Cherokee citizens, with its capital located in Tahlequah, Okla. To learn more, please visit
www.cherokee.org
.)
We’re honored to have the opportunity to continue this tradition, and we’d like to thank the
Cherokee Nation
for working with us to translate the interface for Google search into Cherokee.
Search is now available in 146 interface languages—and the list is growing. If you speak an endangered language that you would like us to support, please sign up for
Google in Your Language
and submit community translations.
Update
10:26 AM
: You can find the press release from the Cherokee Nation
here
.
Posted by ᏇᎩ (Craig Cornelius), Software Engineer, Internationalization
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