Mohawk language

This article is about the language spoken by the Mohawk people; for other uses, see Mohawk.
Mohawk
Eastern / Central Dialect : Kanien’kéha'
Western Dialect : Kanyen'kéha'
Pronunciation [kanjʌ̃ʔˈɡɛha]
Spoken in United States, Canada
Region Ontario, Quebec and northern New York
Ethnicity Mohawk people
Native speakers 3,350 (Ethnologue); 900 in Canada;[1] 2,017 in the United States [2]  (2006)
Language family
Iroquoian
  • Northern
    • Lake Iroquoian
      • Five Nations
        • Mohawk–Oneida
          • Mohawk
Language codes
ISO 639-2 moh
ISO 639-3 moh
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Mohawk (Kanien’kéha) is an Iroquoian language spoken by around 3,000 people of the Mohawk nation in the United States (mainly western and northern New York) and Canada (southern Ontario and Quebec). Mohawk has the largest number of speakers of the Northern Iroquoian languages; today it is the only one with greater than a thousand remaining. At Akwesasne, residents have begun a language immersion school (pre-K to grade 8) in Kanien’kéha to revive the language. With their children learning it, parents and other family members are taking language classes, too.

Contents

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. These are related to the major Mohawk territories since the eighteenth century. The pronunciation of /r/ and several consonant clusters may differ in the dialects.

  Underlying phonology Western Central Eastern
seven /tsjata/ [ˈd͡ʒaːda] [ˈd͡ʒaːda] [ˈd͡zaːda]
nine /tjohtu/ [ˈdjɔhdũ] [ˈɡjɔhdũ] [ˈd͡ʒɔhdũ]
I fall /kjaʔtʌʔs/ [ˈɡjàːdʌ̃ʔs] [ˈɡjàːdʌ̃ʔs] [ˈd͡ʒàːdʌ̃ʔs]
dog /erhar/ [ˈɛrhar] [ˈɛlhal] [ˈɛrhar]

Phonology

The phoneme inventory is as follows (using the International Phonetic Alphabet). 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, except in a few adoptions from French and English, where [m] and [p] 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" is an exonym.

  Dental Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal n      
Plosive t   k ʔ
Affricate   d͡ʒ    
Fricative s     h
Rhotic r      
Approximant l j w  

The Central (Ahkwesáhsne) dialect has the following consonant clusters:

1st↓ · 2nd→ t k s h l n d͡ʒ j w
t tt tk ts th
k kt kk ks kh kw
ʔ ʔt ʔk ʔs ʔl ʔn ʔd͡ʒ ʔj ʔw
s st sk ss sh sl sn sj sw
h ht hk hs hl hn hd͡ʒ hj hw
l lh lj
n nh nl nj
d͡ʒ d͡ʒj
w wh

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

The consonants /k/, /t/ and the clusters /ts kw/ are pronounced voiced before any voiced sound (i.e. a vowel or /j/). They are voiceless at the end of a word or before a voiceless sound. /s/ is voiced word initially and between vowels.

car – kà:sere [ˈɡàːzɛrɛ]
that – thí:ken [ˈthiːɡʌ̃]
hello, still – shé:kon [ˈshɛːɡũ]

Note that th and sh are pronounced as consonant clusters, not single sounds like in English thing and she.

Vowels

  Front Central Back
High i   ũ
Mid e ʌ̃ o
Low   a  

i, e, a, and o are oral vowels, while ʌ̃ and ũ (see help:IPA) are nasalized; oral versions of ʌ̃ and ũ 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.[3] The standard allows for some variation of how the language is represented, most notably:, and the clusters /ts(i)/, /tj/, and /ky/ are written as pronounced in each community. The orthography matches the phonological analysis as above except:

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.

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.[4] Immersion (monolingual) classes for young children at Akwesasne and other reserves 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:

References

  1. ^ Statistics Canada: 2006 Census
  2. ^ Indigenous Languages Spoken in the United States
  3. ^ http://www.kanienkehaka.com/msp/msp.htm "Mohawk Language Standardization Project", Kanienkehaka
  4. ^ Moseley, Christopher and R. E. Asher, ed. Atlas of World Languages (New York: ROutelege, 1994) p. 7

External links