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Cherokee is a Southern Iroquoian language now spoken by around 22,500 people in North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. In 2005, the Cherokee Preservation Foundation funded a survey whose results indicated that only 460 fluent speakers were then living in Eastern Cherokee communities, with 72 percent of them over the age of 50 and elder speakers dying far more quickly than new speakers were emerging. By 2015 that number was down to 215.

The process of revitalizing the language is complex. While it has been spoken for hundreds of years, there is little in written form that can be used for instruction and few people are trained in teaching it.

At the time of the first contact with Europeans, the Cherokee occupied three distinct geographical regions. Three distinct dialects were spoken: Eastern, Middle and Western.

The Eastern or lower dialect is now extinct. Its chief peculiarity is a rolling "r", which takes the place of the "l" of the other dialects. The Cherokee speakers of the Eastern dialect occupied what is now South Carolina and made the first contact with the British. Due to the wars and conflicts of the 1800's, the few remaining speakers were absorbed into the other Cherokee groups further inland.

The Middle dialect (Kituwah) is spoken by the Cherokee now living on the Qualla reservation in North Carolina. In some of its phonetic forms it agrees with the Eastern dialect, but resembles the Western in having the "l" sound.

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