The Cherokee Syllabary as a Resource for Academics and ML

The Cherokee language is considered one of many languages at risk of extinction. 

The Cherokee syllabary is described at the end of this answer.

The Cherokee syllabary is presented to early learner classrooms as a way to learn the academic topics found in the early learner classroom as well to adults as a way to learn the machine learning topics found in a professional development or college course:

ACADEMIC TOPICS FOR EARLY LEARNERS

-Syllables

-Charts

-Phonetics

-Introductory Mathematics

The same syllabary can be presented as way to teach machine learning for adults in professional development courses and related venues:

MACHINE LEARNING

-Tabular Data

The syllabary is an example of tabular data. Familiarity with tabular data give a good introduction to machine learning. Even those who have taken a introductory course in machine learning may have found challenging the use of CSV (comma-separated values) and/or TSV (tab-separated values). CSV and TSV are examples of the tabular data used in machine learning. Learning tabular data from the perspective of a language one is already familiar with can allow the language to become a resource for learning tabular data in machine learning.

-Data Preparation

  Most of the effort in machine learning is for the preparation of data from different formats. As can be seen below, the syllabary is composed of what appear to be letters from the Latin-script alphabet found in the US. The blending of the character would be an example of different formats of data. For example, a learning exercise can be that the Cherokee "B" looks like the "B" in English. However, the former mean "yv". Other examples are how "A" is pronounced "go" yet it different to the English word "go". The details of data preprocessing in machine learning is beyond the scope of this presentation, but this exercise can be a good way to use a language one is familiar with to apply to data preparation.

THE SYLLABERY

The Cherokee language is unique in that what is often referred to as an alphabet in the language is actually a syllabary, a collection of syllables, such that the syllabary can be constructed as a chart with vowels along the x-axis and consonants along the y-axis creating the ability for a chart to map each syllable a function of the x- and y- axis.

Cherokee syllabary - Wikipedia

The Cherokee Native American communities as well as other communities interesting in learning about the Cherokee language.

The solution benefits the Cherokee Native American community. The goal of the solution is to encourage more people to learn about the Cherokee language as well encourage those in the Cherokee community to have a greater interest in their language.

The solution appears to be creative.

It is an online course.

The solution appears to be a creative way to help others.

Not at this time, but hopefully before the competition deadline.

The very foundation of the program necessitates diversity because the success of the program rests on the ability to recruit and retain staff from the Cherokee Native American community for the applications of the Cherokee language for this education project.