| Mohawk | |
|---|---|
| Kanienʼkéha Kanyenʼkéha | |
| Pronunciation | [ɡanjʌ̃ʔˈɡɛha] |
| Native to | United States,Canada |
| Region | Ontario,Quebec and northernNew York |
| Ethnicity | Mohawk people |
Native speakers | 3,875 (2011–2016)[1][2] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | moh |
| ISO 639-3 | moh |
| Glottolog | moha1258 |
| ELP | Mohawk |
 Current distribution of Mohawk speakers in theUnited States | |
 Mohawk is classified as Definitely Endangered by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
| kanien "flint" | |
|---|---|
| People | Kanienʼkehá:ka |
| Language | Kanienʼkéha |
| Country | Kanièn:ke Haudenosauneega |
Mohawk (/ˈmoʊhɔːk/ ⓘ)[3] orKanienʼkéha ('[language] of the Flint Place') is anIroquoian language currently spoken by around 3,500 people of theMohawk nation, located primarily in current or formerHaudenosaunee territories, predominantly inCanada (southernOntario andQuebec), and to a lesser extent in theUnited States (western and northernNew York). The word "Mohawk" is anexonym. In the Mohawk language, the people say that they are fromKanien:ke ('Mohawk Country' or 'Flint Stone Place') and that they areKanienʼkehá꞉ka ('People of the Flint Stone Place' or 'People of the Flint Nation').[4]
The Mohawks were extremely wealthy traders, as other nations in their confederacy needed their flint for tool-making. Their Algonquian-speaking neighbors (and competitors), the People ofMuh-heck Heek Ing ('food-area place'), a people called by the Dutch "Mohicans" or "Mahicans", called the People of Ka-nee-en Ka "Maw Unk Lin" or 'Bear People'. The Dutch heard and wrote that as "Mohawks" and so the People of Kan-ee-en Ka are often referred to asMohawks. The Dutch also referred to the Mohawk asEgils orMaquas. TheFrench adapted those terms asAigniers orMaquis, or called them by the genericIroquois.[citation needed]
The Mohawks were the largest and most powerful of the originalFive Nations, controlling a vast area of land on the eastern frontier of the Iroquois Confederacy. TheNorth Country andAdirondack region of present-dayUpstate New York would have constituted the greater part of the Mohawk-speaking area lasting until the end of the 18th century.
The Mohawk language is currently classified as threatened, and the number of native speakers has continually declined over the past several years.[5]
Mohawk has the largest number of speakers among theNorthern Iroquoian languages, and today it is the only one with more than a thousand remaining speakers. AtAkwesasne, residents have founded a language immersion school (pre-K to grade 8) inKanienʼkéha to revive the language. With their children learning it, parents and other family members are taking language classes, too.
The radio stationCKON-FM (97.3 on-air inHogansburg, New York andSaint Regis, Quebec and widely available online through streaming), licensed by the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation, broadcasts portions of its programming inKanienʼkéha. The call sign is a reference to the Mohawk word "sekon" (or "she:kon"), which means "hello".
A Mohawk language immersion school was established.[6] Mohawk parents, concerned with the lack of culture-based education in public and parochial schools, founded the Akwesasne Freedom School in 1979. Six years later, the school implemented a Mohawk language immersion curriculum based on a traditional cycle of fifteen seasonal ceremonies, and on the MohawkThanksgiving Address, or Ohén꞉ton Karihwatékwen, "The words before all else." Every morning, teachers and students gather in the hallway to recite the Thanksgiving Address in Mohawk.[7]
An adult immersion program was also created in 1985 to address the issue of intergenerational fluency decline of the Mohawk language.[8]
Kanatsiohareke (meaning "place of the clean pot"), is a small Mohawk community on the north bank of theMohawk River, west ofFonda, New York.[1] Kanatsiohareke was created to be a "Carlisle Indian Boarding School in Reverse", teaching Mohawk language and culture.[2] Located at the ancient homeland of the Kanienkehaka (Mohawk), it was re-established in September 1993 under the leadership of Thomas R. Porter (Sakokwenionkwas-"The One Who Wins").[3] The community must raise their own revenue and frequently hold cultural presentations, workshops, and academic events, including an annual Strawberry Festival.[4] A craft shop on site features genuine handmade Native crafts from all over North America.
The primary mission of the community is to try to preserve traditional values, culture, language and lifestyles in the guidance of theKaienerekowa (Great Law of Peace).[5] Kanatsiohareke, Inc. is anon-profit organization under IRS code 501(c)(3).
In 2006, over 600 people were reported to speak the language in Canada, many of them elderly.[9]
Kahnawake is located at a metropolitan location, near centralMontreal,Quebec, Canada. As Kahnawake is located near Montreal, many individuals speak both English and French, and this has contributed to a decline in the use of Mohawk language over the past century. The Mohawk Survival School, the first immersion program was established in 1979. The school's mission was to revitalize Mohawk language. To examine how successful the program had been, questionnaire was given to the Kahnawake residents following the first year. The results indicated that teaching towards younger generation have been successful and showed an increase in the ability to speak the language in private settings, as well as an increase in the mixing of Mohawk in English conversations were found.[10]
In 2011, there were approximately 3,500 speakers of Mohawk, primarily in Quebec, Ontario and western New York.[11][12] Immersion (monolingual) classes for young children atAkwesasne and other reserves are helping to train new first-language speakers. The importance of immersion classes among parents grew after the passage ofBill 101, and in 1979 the Mohawk Survival School was established to facilitate language training at the high school level.[13][14]Kahnawake andKanatsiohareke offer immersion classes for adults.[15][16] In the 2016 Canadian census, 875 people said Mohawk was their only mother tongue.[2]
Mohawk dialogue features prominently inUbisoft Montreal's 2012action-adventureopen world video gameAssassin's Creed III, through the game's main character, the half-Mohawk, half-WelshRatonhnhaké꞉ton, also called Connor, and members of his nativeKanièn꞉ke village around the times of theAmerican Revolution. Ratonhnhaké꞉ton was voiced and modelled byCrow actorNoah Bulaagawish Watts.Hiawatha, the leader of theIroquoian civilization inSid Meier's Civilization V, voiced by Kanentokon Hemlock, speaks Mohawk.
The stories of Mohawk language learners are also chronicled in 'Raising The Words', a short documentary film released in 2016 that explores personal experiences with Mohawk language revitalization inTyendinaga, a Mohawk community roughly 200 kilometres east ofToronto, Ontario, Canada.[17] The film was set to be shown at the 4th annual Ethnografilm festival inParis, France.
The Mohawk language is used in the 2017 filmMohawk, the 1991 filmBlack Robe, and the 2020 television seriesBarkskins.
The language was used throughout in theMarvel Studios animated seriesWhat If...?, in theseason 2 episode "What If... Kahhori Reshaped the World?", where they introduce an original Mohawk superhero named Kahhori.[18]
Mohawk has three major dialects: Western (Ohswé:ken andKenhté:ke), Central (Ahkwesáhsne), and Eastern (Kahnawà꞉ke andKanehsatà꞉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.
| Phonology | Western | Central | Eastern | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| seven | /tsjáːta/ | [ˈd͡ʒaːda] | [ˈd͡ʒaːda] | [ˈd͡zaːda] |
| nine | /tjóhton/ | [ˈdjɔhdũ] | [ˈɡjɔhdũ] | [ˈd͡ʒɔhdũ] |
| I fall | /kjaʔtʌʔs/ | [ˈɡjàːdʌ̃ʔs] | [ˈɡjàːdʌ̃ʔs] | [ˈd͡ʒàːdʌ̃ʔs] |
| dog | /érhar/ | [ˈɛrhar] | [ˈɛlhal] | [ˈɛːɽhaɽ] |
The phoneme inventory of Mohawk is as follows (using theInternational Phonetic Alphabet).
Atypologically uncommon feature of Mohawk (and Iroquoian) phonology is that there are nolabials (m, p, b, f, v), except in a few adoptions from French and English, where[m] and[p] appear (e.g.,mátsis "matches" andaplám "Abraham"); these sounds are late additions to Mohawk phonology and were introduced after widespread European contact.
| Dental | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | n | |||
| Plosive | t (d) | k (ɡ) | ʔ | |
| Affricate | d͡ʒ | |||
| Fricative | s (z) | h | ||
| Approximant | l /r | j | w |
The Central (Ahkwesáhsne) dialect has the following consonant clusters. All clusters can occur word-medially; those on a tinted background can also occur word-initially.
| 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 |
Note that /th/ and /sh/ are pronounced individually in consonant clusters,not single sounds like in English ⟨th⟩ and ⟨sh⟩ inthing andshe.
The consonants/k/,/t/ and the clusters/tskw/ 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.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | iiː | ũũː | |
| Mid | eeː | ʌ̃ʌ̃ː | ooː |
| Low | aaː |
Mohawk has oral andnasalized vowels; four vowel qualities occur in oralphonemes/ieao/, and two only occur as nasalized vowels (/ʌ̃ũ/). Vowels can be long or short.
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Mohawk words have both stress andtone, and it can be classified as a restricted tone system (akapitch-accent system).Stressed vowels carry one of four tonal configurations, two of which arecontour tones: high, low, rising and falling tones. Contour tones only occur in syllables with long vowels.
Mohawk orthography was standardized in 1993.[19] The orthography uses the following letters: ⟨Aa Ee Hh Ii Kk Ll Nn Rr Ss Tt Ww Yy⟩ and⟨’⟩. It uses diacritics for tone, stress, and vowel duration, along with threedigraphs: ⟨ts en on⟩ for /d͡ʒ ʌ̃ ũ/, respectively.
The standard allows for some variation of how the language is represented, 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 low-macron accent is not a part of standard orthography and is not used in the Central or Eastern dialects. In standard orthography,⟨h⟩ is written before⟨n⟩ to create the[en] or[on]:kehnhó꞉tons 'I am closing it'.
Mohawk words tend to be longer on average than words in English, primarily because they consist of a large number ofmorphemes.
Mohawk expresses a number of distinctions on its pronominal elements: person (1st, 2nd, 3rd), number (singular, dual, plural), gender (masculine, feminine/indefinite, feminine/neuter) andinclusivity/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.
There are three core components to the Mohawk proposition: the noun, the predicate, and the particle.[21]
Mohawk words can be composed of many morphemes. What is expressed in English in many words can often be expressed by just one Mohawk word, a phenomenon known aspolysynthesis.
Nouns are given the following form in Mohawk:[21][22][23]
| Nominal Prefix | Noun Stem | Nominal Suffix |
|---|
Noun prefixes give information relating to gender, animacy, number and person, and identify the word as a noun.
For example:
1)oʼnenste "corn"
2)oienʼkwa "tobacco"
Here, the prefixo- is generally found on nouns found in natural environments. Another prefix exists which marks objects that are made by humans.
3)kanhoha "door"
4)kaʼkhare "slip, skirt"
Here, the prefixka- is generally found on human-made things. Phonological variation amongst the Mohawk dialects also gives rise to the prefixga-.
Noun roots are similar to nouns in English in that the noun root in Mohawk and the noun in English have similar meanings.
(Caughnawaha)
5) –eri- "heart"
6) –hi- "river"
7) –itshat- "cloud"
These noun roots are bare. There is no information other than the noun root itself. Morphemes cannot occur individually. That is, to be well-formed and grammatical,-eri- needs pronominal prefixes, or the root can be incorporated into a predicate phrase.
Nominal suffixes are not necessary for a well-formed noun phrase. The suffixes give information relating to location and attributes. For example:
Locative Suffix:
8) i. onuʼtaʼ "hill"
ii. onutaʼke "on the hill"
9) i. onekwvhsaʼ "blood"
ii. onekwvhsaʼke "in the blood"
Here the suffix < -ke > denotes location.
Attributive Suffix:
10) kvjyʼ "fish"
11) kvjaʼkoʼwa "sturgeon" or "big fish"
Here, the suffix-koʼwa denotes an augmentative suffix, which increases the attribute of the noun in question.
Mohawk verbs are one of the more complex parts of the language, composed of many morphemes that describe grammatical relations. The verb takes the following structure:[21][22]
| Pre-Pronominal Prefix | Pronominal Prefix | Reflexive And Reciprocal Particle | Incorporated Noun Root | Verb Root | Suffixes |
|---|
Mohawk grammar allows for whole prepositions to be expressed by one word, which we classify as a verb. The other core elements (subjects, objects, etc.) can beincorporated into the verb. Well-formed verb phrases contain at the bare minimum a verb root and a pronominal prefix. The rest of the elements are not necessary.
Tense, aspect andmodality are expressed via suffixes on the verb phrase as well.
Some examples:
This is composed of three parts; the pronominal prefix, the verb root and a suffix which marks aspect. Mohawk seems to prefer aspect markers to tense to express grammaticalisation in time.
n-
yaʼ-
t-
v-
s-
ha-
noun-
yahyaʼk-
verb-
eʼ
root suffix
n- yaʼ- t- v- s- ha- yahyaʼk- eʼ
PTV TRLOC DU- FUT- ITER- noun- verb- {root suffix}
"…where he will cross over again from here to there…"
This example shows multiple prefixes that can be affixed to the verb root, but certain affixes are forbidden from coexisting together. For example, the aorist and the future tense affix will not be found on the same well-formed sentence.
v-
aʼ
momentaryASP suffix
v- se- natahr- aʼ
FUT NOM-PRO VB-ROOT {momentary ASP suffix}
"You will make a visit"
a-
aʼ
momentary suffix
a- se- natahr- aʼ
COND NOM-PRO VB-ROOT {momentary suffix}
"You should make a visit"
u-
hneʼ
momentary suffix
sa- natahr- u- hneʼ
ACC-PRO VB-ROOT STAT {momentary suffix}
"You were visiting"
Here, different prefixes and suffixes are used that mark tense, aspect and modality.
Most grammatical relations in Mohawk are expressed through various different affixes onto a verb. Subjects, objects, and relationships between subjects and objects are given their own affixes. In Mohawk, each transitive relationship between subjects and objects are given their own prefix. For example:
ku-
I-you
noruhkwa
love
ku- noruhkwa
I-you love
"I love you"
ri-
I-him
noruhkwa
love
ri- noruhkwa
I-him love
"I love him"
ke-
I-it/her
noruhkwa
love
ke- noruhkwa
I-it/her love
"I love it/her"
Each of these affixes are denoting a transitive relationship between two things. There are more affixes for denoting transitive relationships like "we-they", they-us (inclusive/exclusive), etc.
One of the features of Mohawk callednoun incorporation allows a verb to absorb a noun into it. When incorporation happens, an epenthetica can appear between the noun root and the verb root.[21][22] For example:
Owiraʼa
Baby
wahrakeʼ
ate
ne
the
oʼwahru
meat
Owiraʼa wahrakeʼ ne oʼwahru
Baby ate the meat
With noun incorporation:
Owiraʼa
Baby
wahaʼwahrakeʼ
meat-ate
Owiraʼa wahaʼwahrakeʼ
Baby meat-ate
waʼe
-ks
dish
-ohareʼ
wash
waʼe -ks -ohareʼ
{} dish wash
"She dish-washed"
waʼke
-nakt
bed
-a
increment
-hninuʼ
buy
waʼke -nakt -a -hninuʼ
{} bed increment buy
"I bed-bought"
waha
-naʼtar
bread
-a
increment
-kwetareʼ
-cut
waha -naʼtar -a -kwetareʼ
{} bread increment -cut
"He bread-cut"
Most of these examples take the epenthetic vowela; it can be omitted if the incorporated noun does not give rise a complex consonant cluster in the middle of the word.
Six Nations Polytechnic inOhsweken, Ontario, offersOgwehoweh language diploma and degree programs in Mohawk orCayuga.[24]
Since September 2017, theUniversity of Waterloo inWaterloo, Ontario, Offers a credit course in Mohawk; the classes are given atRenison University College in collaboration with the Waterloo Aboriginal Education Centre,St. Paul's University College.[25]
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 [as of when?] available:
There are software packages available for both theMicrosoft Windows andMac operating systems to enable typing of the Mohawk language electronically. Both packages are available throughFirstVoices, a web-based project to support Aboriginal peoples' teaching and archiving of language and culture.[26]
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Media related toMohawk language at Wikimedia Commons
Mohawk language at Wikibooks| International | |
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