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By itself, being able to read smartphone home screens in Cherokee won鈥檛 be enough to safeguard the Indigenous language, endangered after a long history of erasure. But it might be a step toward immersing younger tribal citizens in the language spoken by a dwindling number of their elders.

That鈥檚 the hope of Principal Chief Richard Sneed of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, who鈥檚 counting on more inclusive consumer technology聽鈥� and the involvement of a major tech company聽鈥� to help out.

Mr. Sneed and other Cherokee leaders have spent several months consulting with Lenovo-owned Motorola, which several weeks ago introduced a Cherokee language interface on its newest line of phones. Now phone users will be able to find apps and toggle settings using the syllable-based written form of the language first created by the Cherokee Nation鈥檚 Sequoyah in the early 1800s. It will appear on the company鈥檚 high-end Edge Plus phones when they go on sale in the spring.

鈥淚t鈥檚 just one more piece of a very large puzzle of trying to preserve and proliferate the language,鈥� said Mr. Sneed, who worked with members of his own western North Carolina tribe and other Cherokee leaders who speak a different dialect in Oklahoma that is more widely spoken but also endangered.

It鈥檚 not the first time consumer technology has embraced the language, as Apple, Microsoft, and Google already enable people to configure their laptops and phones so that they can type in Cherokee. But the Cherokee language preservationists who worked on the Motorola project said they tried to imbue it with the culture聽鈥� not just the written symbols聽鈥� they are trying to protect.

Take the start button on the Motorola interface, which features a Cherokee word that translates into English as 鈥渏ust start.鈥� That鈥檚 a clever nod to the casual way Cherokee elders might use the phrase, said Benjamin Frey, a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

鈥淚t could have said 鈥榣et鈥檚 get started鈥� in many different ways,鈥� Dr. Frey said. 鈥淏ut it said 鈥榟alenagwu鈥櫬犫�� just start. And that鈥檚 very Cherokee. I can kind of see an elder kind of shrugging and saying, 鈥榃ell, I guess let鈥檚 do it.鈥� ... It reminds me very fondly of how the elders talk, which is pretty exciting.鈥�

When Motorola thought of incorporating Cherokee into its phones, Dr. Frey was one of the people it reached out to. It was looking to incorporate a language that the United Nations鈥� culture agency, UNESCO, had designated as among the world鈥檚 most endangered but also one that had an active community of language scholars it could consult.

鈥淲e work with the people, not about the people,鈥� said Juliana Rebelatto, who holds the role of head linguist and globalization manager for Motorola鈥檚 mobile division. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 want to work on the language without them.鈥�

Motorola modeled its Cherokee project on a similar Indigenous language revitalization project Ms. Rebelatto helped work on in Brazil, where the brand聽鈥� part of China-based parent company Lenovo聽鈥� has a higher market share than it does in the United States. The company last year introduced phone interfaces serving the Kaingang community of southern Brazil, and the Nheengatu community of the Amazonian regions of Brazil and neighboring countries.

Several big tech companies have expressed interest in recent years in making their technology work better for endangered Indigenous languages, more to show their good will or advance speech recognition research than to fulfill a business imperative.

Microsoft鈥檚 text translation service recently added Inuinnaqtun and Inuktitut, spoken in the Canadian Arctic, and grassroots artificial intelligence researchers are doing similar projects throughout the Americas and beyond. But there鈥檚 a long way to go before digital voice assistants understand these languages as well as they do English聽鈥� and for some languages the time is running out.

Dr. Frey and Mr. Sneed said they recognize that some Cherokee will have concerns about tech companies making a product feature of their work to preserve their language聽鈥� whether it鈥檚 a text-based interface like Motorola鈥檚 or potential future projects that could record speech to build a voice assistant or real-time translator.

鈥淚 think it is a danger that companies could take this kind of material and take advantage of it, selling it without sharing the proceeds with community members,鈥� Dr. Frey said. 鈥淧ersonally, I decided that the potential benefit was worth the risk, and I鈥檓 hoping that that will be borne out.鈥�

Dr. Frey didn鈥檛 grow up speaking Cherokee, largely due to his grandmother鈥檚 experiences of being punished for speaking the language when she was sent to boarding school. For over 150 years, Indigenous children in the U.S. and Canada were taken from their communities and forced into boarding schools that focused on assimilation.

She and others of her generation were beaten for speaking the language, had her mouth washed out with soap, and was told that 鈥淓nglish was the only way to get ahead in the world,鈥� Dr. Frey said. She didn鈥檛 pass it on to Dr. Frey鈥檚 mom.

鈥淭his was a 13,000-year chain of intergenerational transfer of a language from parents to children that was broken because the federal government decided that English was the only language that was worthwhile,鈥� he said.

Only about 225 of the roughly 16,000 members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians spoke Cherokee fluently as their first language at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

鈥淣ow I think we鈥檙e down to 172 or so,鈥� said Mr. Sneed, the principal chief. 鈥淪o we鈥檝e lost quite a few in the last couple of years.鈥�

The Oklahoma-based Cherokee Nation has more speakers聽鈥� an estimated 2,000聽鈥� but they are still a fraction of the more than 400,000 people who comprise what is the largest of the 574 federally recognized tribes in the U.S.

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said in a statement Monday that incorporating the language into technology products is 鈥渁 win not just for Cherokee Language preservation, but for the perpetuation of all Native languages.鈥�

Dr. Frey hopes the new tool will be a conversation-starter between older Cherokee language speakers and their tech-savvy grandkids. It complements language immersion programs and other homegrown activism that鈥檚 already happening in North Carolina and Oklahoma. He said it will take more than text-based smartphone interfaces to really make a difference.

鈥淚f the youth today are watching TikTok videos, we need more TikTok videos in Cherokee,鈥� said Dr. Frey. 鈥淚f they鈥檙e paying attention to YouTube, we need more YouTubers creating content in Cherokee. If they鈥檙e trading memes online, we need more memes that are written in Cherokee.鈥�

鈥淲e do have to make sure that the language continues to be used and continues to be spoken,鈥� said Dr. Frey. 鈥淥therwise, it could die out.鈥�

This story was reported by The Associated Press. AP writer Felicia Fonseca contributed to this report from Flagstaff, Arizona.