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CHEROKEE SYLLABARY using the

“Bickerdike Extended Transliteration” Method 

(Excerpt from D.P. Bickerdike's books)

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While below is a detailed breakdown of the syllabary sounds, when using the “Bickerdike Transliteration” I will typically show the sound associated with the corresponding Cherokee character in parenthesis “( )” and also the “perceived sounds” following the parenthesis. For example, the syllable sound of “tle” (“tle” is written in the common / standard transliteration for a Cherokee character which represents two different sounds) would be written in the Bickerdike Transliteration as either “(tl)kley” or “(tl)gley.” The letters within the parenthesis “(tl)” identifies the corresponding “root Cherokee character”, while the referenced sounds of “kl” and “gl” are the harder or softer “perceived sounds” of the listener based upon the speaker’s jaw being almost closed while uttering the sounds of: “tl” [“tl” can be perceived as sounding like“kl” with the jaw almost closed] and “dl” [“dl” can be perceived as sounding like “gl” with the jaw almost closed.] This is designed to help the new learner know how to “correctly correlate” the uttered Cherokee sounds (which are perceived to be heard) with the written Cherokee language (either in the transliterated or Cherokee Syllabary form.) 
Practice uttering the “tl” sound with your jaw being “almost closed” and also practice uttering the “dl” sound with your jaw being “almost closed” (these sounds will begin to sound closer to the “kl” and “gl” sounds, while technically they remain as “tl” and “dl” sounds in mouth/tongue formation (therefore, only “sounding” different as the jaw of the speaker is almost completely closed.)

Please note the “unh” and the “[h]” references as follows:

When you see “[h]” within this method, it represents a puff of breath as if you quickly breathe into your hands to warm them (no vocal cords are used for this expression of sound.) The transliterated “[h]” representation is often paired with other transliterated letters / syllables, such as “[h]n”, “[h]w”, and “[h]y” and this is the only sound that is displayed in this book using the left and right brackets “[ ].”
The “unh” sound is a nasal sound, similar to saying the first syllable of “unger” (with a slight nasal quality.) The “unh” is the equivalent nasal sound compared with the (Traditional) English transliteration which is transliterated as: “v”.

Also: The Cherokee characters which have more than one sound are often formed with the jaw “almost closed” but without the teeth touching. Therefore, a “dl” sound can sound similar to a “gl” sound, an a “tl” sound can sound similar to a “kl” sound.

One final note: The "n" sounds have two utterances which can either be like the standard English "n" sound, or it can be the nasalized sound, which I represent as "(hn)" (modeled after the style of Ed Fields); please note that this representation is uttered as a nasal sound (i.e., the parentheses in this case do not indicate otherwise.) The “[h]” (slight puff of air) is very subtle, and just enough to help contribute toward creating the nasal sound.