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; 2,017 in the United States  (2006)
Language family	Iroquoian Northern Lake Iroquoian Five Nations Mohawk–Oneida Mohawk
Language codes
ISO 639-2	moh
ISO 639-3	moh

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.

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

Plaque in English, Mohawk, and French describing the Grand River. Plaque located in Galt, Cambridge, Ontario

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 /ts(i)/, /tj/, and /ky/ are written as pronounced in each community. The orthography matches the phonological analysis as above except:

• The glottal stop /ʔ/ is written with an apostrophe ’, it is often omitted at the end of words, especially in Eastern dialect where it is typically not pronounced.
• /dʒ/
  • /dʒ/ is written ts in the Eastern dialect (reflecting pronunciation). Seven is tsá:ta [dzaːda].
  • /dʒ/ is written tsi in the Central dialect. Seven is tsiá:ta [dʒaːda].
  • /dʒ/ is written tsy in the Western dialect. Seven is tsyá:ta [dʒaːda].
• /j/
  • /j/ is typically written i in the Central and Eastern dialects. Six is ià:ia’k [jàːjaʔk].
  • /j/ is usually written y in the Western dialect. Six is yà:ya’k [jàːjaʔk].
• The vowel /ʌ̃/ is written en, as in one énska [ʌ̃ska].
• The vowel /ũ/ is written on, as in eight sha’té:kon [shaʔdɛːɡũ].
• In cases where the vowel /e/ or /o/ is followed by an /n/ in the same syllable, the /n/ is written with a low-macron accent: keṉhó:tons (I am closing a door). If the ṉ did not have the accent, the sequence ⟨en⟩ would be pronounced [ʌ̃]. Not all writers use the low-macron accent.

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 /ʔ/ or /h/ + a consonant (there may be, of course, exceptions to this and other rules). The underlying /ʔ/ or /h/ reappears when stress is placed elsewhere. It is written with a grave accent and colon: stomach onekwèn:ta (from /onekwʌ̃ʔta/).

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 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:

• Rosetta Stone levels 1 and 2 (CD-ROM) edited by Frank and Carolee Jacobs and produced by the Kanien’kehá:ka Onkwawén:na Raotitióhkwa Language and Cultural Center at Kahnawà:ke (secondary/high school level)
• David Kanatawakhon Maracle, Kanyen'keha Tewatati (Let's Speak Mohawk), ISBN 0-88432-723-X (book and 3 companion tapes are available from Audio Forum) (high school/college level)
• Nancy Bonvillain, A Grammar of Akwesasne Mohawk (professional level)
• Chris W. Harvey, Sathahitáhkhe' Kanien'kéha (Introductory Level Mohawk Language Textbook, Eastern Dialect), ISBN 0-968-38142-1 (high school/college level)
• Josephine S. Horne, Kanien'kéha Iakorihonnién:nis (book and 5 companion CDs are available from Kahnawà:ke Cultural Center) (secondary/high school level)
• Nora Deering & Helga Harries Delisle, Mohawk: A Teaching Grammar (book and 6 companion tapes are available from Kahnawà:ke Cultural Center) (high school/college level)

External links

• Mohawk language at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)
• Mohawk Language Dictionary and Virtual Teachers
• Mohawk - English Dictionary, Websters Online Dictionary
• Mohawk language, alphabet and pronunciation, Omniglot
• Marianne Mithun, "A grammar sketch of Mohawk", Conseil Supérieur de la Langue Française, Quebec (French)