Editing Cherokee language (section)

== Classification ==
Cherokee is an [[Iroquoian language]], and the only Southern Iroquoian language spoken today. Linguists believe that the Cherokee people migrated to the southeast from the [[Great Lakes region]]{{sfn|Montgomery-Anderson|2015|p=3}} about three thousand years ago, bringing with them their language. Despite the three-thousand-year geographic separation, the Cherokee language today still shows some similarities to the languages spoken around the Great Lakes, such as [[Mohawk language|Mohawk]], [[Onondaga language|Onondaga]], [[Seneca language|Seneca]], and [[Tuscarora language|Tuscarora]].

Some researchers (such as Thomas Whyte) have suggested the homeland of the proto-Iroquoian language resides in Appalachia. Whyte contends, based on linguistic and molecular studies, that proto-Iroquoian speakers participated in cultural and economic exchanges along the north–south axis of the Appalachian Mountains.{{Citation needed|date=December 2017}} The divergence of Southern Iroquoian (which Cherokee is the only known branch of) from the Northern Iroquoian languages occurred approximately 4,000–3,000 years ago as [[Late Archaic (North America)|Late Archaic]] proto-Iroquoian speaking peoples became more sedentary with the advent of horticulture, advancement of lithic technologies and the emergence of social complexity in the Eastern Woodlands. In the subsequent millennia, the Northern Iroquoian and Southern Iroquoian would be separated by various Algonquin and Siouan speaking peoples as linguistic, religious, social and technological practices from the Algonquin to the north and east and the Siouans to the west from the [[Ohio Valley]] would come to be practiced by peoples in the Chesapeake region, as well as parts of the Carolinas.