This ending allows you to indicate “on or in” for the word you modify.
When added to a word that ends in “-a”, the “-a” changes into an “-o”.
☞ Make sure to always say the part before the final “-hi” with a high rising tone, even if you drop the final “-hi” as part of informal speech.
☞ Depending on context, if you drop the final “-hi” some speakers might understand you as indicating “Location.” instead of “On.” or “In.”.
Use “Ꮭ” and add the prefix “Ᏹ-”.
Examples:
See also “Able to… ” and “Able to if”.
For negative conditional ability, take the Immediate Tense stem and add “Ꮭ” and use prefix “ᏴᎦ-”
To indicate a negative command:
Use the word “ᏞᏍᏗ (hle²sti)” and add the prefix “Ꮵ- (ji²-)” to the Immediate Tense stem.
If you take the Infinitive form and add a high falling tone on its rightmost long vowel you imply a “need to do” something. Knowing exactly where to add this tone requires experience listening to long timer speakers of the language. ☞ You can indicate that it is a “must do” instead of a “need do” by adding the word ᎠᏎ “a²se”.
Related to the idea of “more” and “most” is the idea of “more than usual”. In English this can be expressed by phrases like “really loud”, “extra hard”, “really bad”, “especially good”, and so forth.
There are several different ways in Cherokee to express the idea of “more” and “most” when talking about attributes like color or size. Here are some of these ways:
By adding both the prefix “yị-” and the word ᎡᎵᏊ [e²li⁴gwu] “It’s possible” to the Recent Past form you create the new meaning of “Might be about to”, “Could do.”, or “May do.”.