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Mohawk language
 
 
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Mohawk is a Native American
Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from the regions of North America now encompassed by the continental United States United States, including parts of Alaska and the island state of Hawaii....
 language spoken by the Mohawk nation
Mohawk nation

Mohawk are an Indigenous peoples of the Americas of North America originally from the Mohawk Valley in upstate New York to southern Quebec and eastern Ontario....
 in the United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 and Canada
Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
. It is part of the Iroquoian family. In schools of northern New York particularly in Native American Reservations Native American Languages are taught depending on the tribe in the reservation

wk has three major dialects: Western (Six Nations and Tyendinaga), Central (Ahkwesáhsne), and Eastern (Kahnawà:ke and Kanehsatà:ke); the differences between them are largely phonological.






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Encyclopedia


Mohawk is a Native American
Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from the regions of North America now encompassed by the continental United States United States, including parts of Alaska and the island state of Hawaii....
 language spoken by the Mohawk nation
Mohawk nation

Mohawk are an Indigenous peoples of the Americas of North America originally from the Mohawk Valley in upstate New York to southern Quebec and eastern Ontario....
 in the United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 and Canada
Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
. It is part of the Iroquoian family. In schools of northern New York particularly in Native American Reservations Native American Languages are taught depending on the tribe in the reservation

Dialects

Mohawk has three major dialects: Western (Six Nations and Tyendinaga), Central (Ahkwesáhsne), and Eastern (Kahnawà:ke and Kanehsatà:ke); the differences between them are largely phonological. The pronunciation of /r/ and several consonant clusters may differ in the dialects.
 Underlying PhonologyWesternCentralEastern
seven
nine
I fall
dog


Phonology

The phoneme inventory is as follows (using the International Phonetic Alphabet
International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic....
). Phonological representation (underlying forms) are in /slashes/, and the standard Mohawk orthography is in bold.

Consonants

An interesting feature of Mohawk (and Iroquoian) phonology is that there are no labials
Labial consonant

Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips or with the lower lip and the upper teeth . English is a bilabial nasal consonant sonorant, and are bilabial stop consonant , and are labiodental fricative consonant....
, except in a few adoptions from French and English, where and appear (e.g., mátsis matches and aplám Abraham); these sounds are late additions to Mohawk phonology and were introduced after widespread European contact. The word "Mohawk" itself is an exonym.

 Dental
Dental consonant

In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages....
Palatal
Palatal consonant

Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex consonant....
Velar
Velar consonant

Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the Soft palate)....
Glottal
Glottal consonant

Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricatives, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider them to be consonants at all....
Nasal
Nasal consonant

A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
   
Plosive 
Affricate   
Fricative  
Rhotic
Rhotic consonant

Rhotic consonants, or "R"-like sounds, are non-lateral liquid consonants. This class of sounds is difficult to characterise phonetically, though most of them share some acoustic peculiarities, most notably a lowered third formant in their sound spectrum....
   
Approximant
Approximant consonant

Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence....
 


The Central (Ahkwesáhsne) dialect has the following consonant clusters:
1st? · 2nd? t k s h l n ? j w
t tt tk ts th  
k kt kk ks kh  
? ?t ?k ?s ?l ?n ?? ?j ?w
s st sk ss sh sl sn   sj sw
h ht hk hs   hl hn h? hj hw
l lh lj  
n nh nl   nj  
?   ?j  
w wh  


All clusters can occur word-medially; those on a red background can also occur word-initially.

The consonants are pronounced voiced before any voiced sound (i.e. a vowel or ). They are voiceless at the end of a word or before a voiceless sound. is voiced word initially and between vowels.

car – kà:sere
that – thí:ken
hello, still – shé:kon
Note that th and sh are pronounced as consonant clusters, not single sounds like in English thing and she.

Vowels


 Front
Front vowel

A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
Central
Central vowel

A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel....
Back
Back vowel

A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
High
Close vowel

A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
i, e, a, and o are oral vowels, while and (see help:IPA) are nasalized
Nasal vowel

A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the Soft palate so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. The term stands in opposition to the term "oral vowel" refers to an ordinary vowel without this nasalisation....
; oral versions of and do not occur in the language.

Orthography

The Mohawk alphabet consists of these letters: a e h i k n o r s t w y along with ’ and :. The orthography was standardized in 1993. The standard allows for some variation of how the language is represented, most notably:, and the clusters , , and are written as pronounced in each community. The orthography matches the phonological analysis as above except:
  • The glottal stop is written with an apostrophe ’, it is often omitted at the end of words, especially in Eastern dialect where it is typically not pronounced.** is written ts in the Eastern dialect (reflecting pronunciation). Seven is tsá:ta .
    • is written tsi in the Central dialect. Seven is tsiá:ta .
    • is written tsy in the Western dialect. Seven is tsyá:ta .** is typically written i in the Central and Eastern dialects. Six is ià:ia’k .
    • is usually written y in the Western dialect. Six is yà:ya’k .
  • The vowel is written en, as in one énska .
  • The vowel is written on, as in eight sha’té:kon .


Stress, length, and tone

Stress, vowel length and tone are linked together in Mohawk. There are three kinds of stressed vowels: short-high tone, long-high tone, and long-falling tone. Stress is always written and only occurs once per word.
  • Short-high tone usually (but not always) appears in closed syllables or before /h/. It is written with an acute accent: stick kánhia, road oháha.
  • Long-high tone generally occurs in open syllables. It is written with a combination acute accent and colon: town kaná:ta, man rón:kwe. Notice that when it is one of the nasal vowels which is long, the colon appears after the n.
  • Long-falling tone is the result of the word stress falling on a vowel which comes before a or + a consonant (there may be, of course, exceptions to this and other rules). The underlying or reappears when stress is placed elsewhere. It is written with a grave accent and colon: stomach onekwèn:ta (from ).


Grammar


Mohawk expresses a large number of pronominal distinctions: person (1st, 2nd, 3rd), number (singular, dual, plural), gender (masculine, feminine/indefinite, feminine/neuter) and inclusivity/exclusivity on the first person dual and plural. Pronominal information is encoded in prefixes on the verbs; separate pronoun words are used for emphasis. There are three main paradigms of pronominal prefixes: subjective (with dynamic verbs), objective (with stative verbs), and transitive.

Current number of speakers

As of 1994 there were approximately 3,000 speakers of Mohawk, primarily in Quebec, Ontario and western New York. Immersion (monolingual) classes for young children are helping to train new first-language speakers.

Learning Mohawk

A few resources are available for self-study of Mohawk by a person with no or limited access to native speakers of Mohawk. Here is a collection of some resources currently available:

  • Kanyen'keha Tewatati (Let's Speak Mohawk) by David Kanatawakhon Maracle (ISBN 0-88432-723-X) (Book and 3 companion tapes are available from ) (high school/college level)
  • A Grammar of Akwesasne Mohawk by Nancy Bonvillain (Available from ) (professional level)
  • Sathahitáhkhe' Kanien'kéha (Introductory Level Mohawk Language Textbook, Eastern Dialect) by Chris W. Harvey (ISBN 0-968-38142-1; available from ) (high school/college level)
  • Kanien'kéha Iakorihonnién:nis by Josephine S. Horne (Book and 5 companion CDs are available from [email:kor@korkahnawake.org Kahnawà:ke Cultural Center]) (secondary/high school level)
  • Mohawk: A Teaching Grammar by Nora Deering & Helga Harries Delisle (Book and 6 companion tapes are available from [email:kor@korkahnawake.org Kahnawà:ke Cultural Center]) (high school/college level)


External links

  • from Omniglot