Mohawk language

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Mohawk: Kanien'kÃÆ' Â © ha [? a. nj ???. '? e.ha] "[language] of Flint Place") is an endangered Iroquoian language currently spoken by some 3,500 people from the Mohawk nation, located mainly in Canada (southern Ontario and Quebec). ) and to a lesser extent in the United States (west and north of New York).

Video Mohawk language

Name

The word "Mohawk" is an exonim. In Mohawk, people say they come from Kanien'kehÃÆ'¡: ka or "Flint Stone Place" or "People of the Flint Nation". Thus, Mohawks are very wealthy merchants because other countries in their confederations need their stones for tool making. Their Algonquian-speaking neighbors (and competitors), People of Muh-heck Heek Ing ("food places"), people whom the Dutch call "Mohicans" or "Mahicans" , calling People Ka-nee-en Ka "Maw Unk Lin" or Bear People . The Dutch heard and wrote this as "Mohawks". This is why the people of Kan-ee-en Ka are often referred to as Mohawks . The Dutch also refer to Mohawk as Egils or Maquas . The French adapt these terms as Aigniers , Maquis , or call them with generic Iroquois .

Maps Mohawk language

History

The Mohawks are composed of the largest and most powerful of the original Five Nations, which ruled a vast area on the eastern border of the Iroquois Confederacy. The North Country and Adirondack region now in New York will be the largest part of the Mohawk-speaking region that lasted until the late 18th century.

Alexander Graham Bell

Scottish scientist Alexander Graham Bell, one of the inventors of the telephone, was intrigued by the human voice: when he found the Six Nations Sanctuary across the river at Onondaga, he studied the Mohawk language and translated vocabulary which was then not written into the Visible. Speech symbol for the first time. For his work, Bell was awarded the title of Honorary Chief and participated in a ceremony in which he wore a Mohawk headdress and danced a traditional dance.

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Current status

The Mohawk language is currently classified as threatened, and the number of native speakers has continued to decline over the past few years.

Mohawk has the largest number of speakers among the Iroquoian North languages, and today is the only one that has more than a thousand speakers left. At Akwesasne, residents have begun an immersion language school (pre-K to grade 8) at Kanien'kÃÆ' Â © ha to revive the language. With their children learning it, parents and other family members also take language classes.

Mohawk language immersion school established. Mohawk's parents, concerned about the lack of culture-based education in public schools and parishes, founded the Akwesasne Freedom School in 1979. Six years later, the school adopted the Mohawk language immersion curriculum based on the traditional cycle of fifteen seasonal ceremonies, and the Thanksgiving Address Mohawk, or OhÃÆ' Â © n: ton KarihwatÃÆ' Â © kwen, "Words before." Every morning, teachers and students gather in the hallway to read Thanksgiving Address at Mohawk.

An adult immersion program was also created in 1985 to address the problem of decreasing the intergenerational fluency of the Mohawk language.

Kanatsiohareke (Gah-nah-jo-ha-lay-gay) is a small community of Mohawk/ Kanienkahaka on the north bank of the Mohawk River, west of Fonda, New York. This name means "Place of clean pot." ^[1] Kanatsiohareke was created to be "Carlisle Indian Boarding School in Reverse", teaching Mohawk language and culture. ^[2] Located in the ancient homeland of Kanienkehaka (Mohawk), it was re-established in September 1993 under the leadership of Thomas R. Porter (Sakokwenionkwas- "The One Who Wins"). ^[3] The community should increase their own income and often hold cultural presentations, workshops, and academic events, including the annual Strawberry Festival. ^[4] An on-site handicraft shop featuring original handmade crafts from all over North America.

The main mission of the community is to try to preserve traditional values, culture, language and lifestyle under the guidance of Kaienerekowa (Law of Peace). ^[5] Kanatsiohareke, Inc. is a non-profit organization with IRS 501c3 code.

In 2006, over 600 people reported speaking in Canadian, many of them elderly.

Kahnawake is located in a metropolitan location, near the center of Montreal, Canada. Since Kahnawake is located near Montreal, many people speak English and French, and this has contributed to the decline in Mohawk language usage over the past century. The Mohawk Survival School, the first immersion program established in 1979. The school mission was to revitalize the Mohawk language. To test how successful the program was, the questionnaires were given to Kahnawake residents after the first year. The results indicate that teaching towards the younger generation has been successful and demonstrates the increased ability to speak the language in personal settings, as well as the increase in Mohawk mixing in English conversations found.

Current speaker count

In 2011, there were about 3,500 Mohawk speakers, mainly in Quebec, Ontario and western New York. The immersion class (monolingual) for young people in Akwesasne and other asylum helps train the first language speakers. The importance of immersion classes among parents grew after the receipt of Bill 101, and in 1979 the Mohawk Resilience School was established to facilitate language training at the secondary school level. Kahnawake and Kanatsiohareke offer immersion classes for adults. In 2006, fewer than 300 people in Canada (Quebec and Ontario) were knowledgeable about the language. About 250 of them live reserves in urban areas.

Usage in popular culture

Mohawk's striking feature dialog in Ubisoft Montreal 2012 action-adventure video game world is open Assassin's Creed III , through the main characters of the game, half-Mohawk, half-English RatonhnhakÃÆ' Â ©: ton ( ra-doon-ha-gai-doon"), also called Connor, and a member of the village of KaniÃÆ'¨n: to his return around the time of the American revolution. RatonhnhakÃÆ' Â ©: ton voiced and modeled by actor Crow Noah Bulaagawish Watts. Hiawatha, leader of the Iroquoian civilization in Sid Meier's Civilization V, voiced by Kanentokon Hemlock, spoke modern Mohawk.

Mohawk learner stories are also written in 'Raising The Words', a short documentary that explores personal experiences with the revitalization of the Mohawk language in Tyendinaga, the Mohawk community about 200 kilometers east of Toronto, Canada. The film will be screened at the 4th Ethnografilm annual festival in Paris, France.

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Dialect

Mohawk has three main dialects: West (OhswÃÆ' Â ©: ken and KenhtÃÆ'Â ©: to), Middle (AhkwesÃÆ'¡hsne), and East (KahnawÃÆ': ke and KanehsatÃÆ': ke); the differences between them are largely phonological. This is related to the main Mohawk region since the 18th century. Speech /r/ and some consonant groups may differ in dialect.

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Phonology

The mohawk's words tend to be longer than words in English, mainly because they consist of a large number of morphemes, or 'meaningful parts'. The phonem inventory is as follows (using the International Phonetic Alphabet). The phonological representation (underlying form) is in/slash/, and the standard Mohawk orthography is in bold.

Consonants

An interesting feature of Mohawk's (and Iroquoian) phonology is that there are no labials, except in some adoptions from France and England, where [m] and [p] appears (e.g., mÃÆ'¡tsis fits and aplÃÆ'Â ¡< Abraham ); these sounds are the final addition of Mohawk's phonology and introduced after extensive European contact.

The Central (AhkwesÃÆ'¡hsne) dialect has the following consonant clusters:

All clusters can occur medial words; those with a red background may also have word-start.

The consonant /k/,/t/ and group /ts kw/ is pronounced voiced before voice sound (ie vowel or /j/). They speak at the end of the word or before the sound comes out. /s/ is a word voiced initially and among vowels.

car - kÃÆ': sere ['? ÃÆ': z? r? ]

that - thÃÆ': ken ['thi: ???]

hello, still - shÃÆ' Â ©: kon ['sh ?: ??]

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

Vocal

i , a , and o is an oral vowel, while ?? and ? (see help: IPA) is pre-aligned; oral version ?? and ? does not occur in the language.

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Grammar

Mohawk reveals a number of differences in his pronounced elements: people (1, 2, 3), numbers (singular, double, plural), gender (masculine, feminine/indeterminate, feminine/neutral) and inclusivity/exclusivity in first and plural people. Pronominal information is encoded in a prefix on the verb; separate pronouns are used for emphasis. There are three main paradigms of the pronominal prefix: subjective (with dynamic verbs), objective (with stative verbs), and transitive.

There are three core components to Mohawk's proposition: nouns, predicates, and particles.

Mohawk words can consist of many morphemes. What is expressed in English in many words can often be expressed with only one Mohawk word ("polysynthesis").

Noun

The noun is given the following form in Mohawk:

The noun prefix provides information relating to gender, animation, numbers and people, and identifies the word as a noun.

As an example:

1) o ' nenste "jagung"

2) o ien'kwa "tembakau"

Here, the o - prefix is ​​commonly found in nouns found in the natural environment. Other prefixes exist that mark objects made by humans.

3) ka nhoha "pintu"

4) ka " khare" slip, rok "

Here, the prefix ka - is commonly found on man-made objects. The phonological variation among Mohawk dialects also gives rise to the ga - prefix to generally show man-made objects.

The noun root is similar to the noun in English where the root nouns in Mohawk and nouns in English have a similar meaning.

(Caughnawaha)

5) -seri- "heart"

6) -hi- "river"

7) -itu- "cloud"

The root of this noun is empty. No information other than the root of the noun itself. It should be noted that morphemes can not occur individually. That is, to be well-formed and grammatically, -eri - requires a pronominal prefix, or the root can be inserted into the predicate phrase.

Nominal suffixes are not required for well-formed noun phrases. Suffix provides information relating to location and attribute. As an example:

Local suffix:

8) i. onu'ta '"bukit"

ii. onuta ' to " on hill"

9) i. onekwvhsa '"blood"

ii. onekwvhsa ' to " in blood"

Here suffix & lt; -to & gt; show location.

Suffix attribute:

10) kvjy '"fish"

11) kvja ' ko'wa "sturgeon" or "big fish"

Here, the -ko'wa suffix indicates an augmentative suffix, which increases the attribute of the noun in question.

Verba

Mohawk verbs are one of the more complex parts of the language, consisting of many morphemes depicting grammatical relationships. The verb takes the following structure:

Mohawk's grammar allows the whole proposition to be expressed in one word, which we classify as a verb. Other core elements (subject, object, etc.) can be entered into a verb. A well-formed verb phrase contains at least a verb root and a pronominal prefix. The remaining elements are not needed.

Tense, aspect and modalities are expressed through suffixes on the verb phrase as well.

Some examples:

12) katorat "I am hunting"

k-atorat-s

I-hunt-habits ASP

It consists of three parts; pronominal prefix, verb root and suffix marking aspect. Mohawk seems to prefer a striking aspect marker to express grammatisation in time.

13) his'tsvshayaya'ke '"... where he will cross again from here to there..."

n-ya'-t-v-s-ha-yahya'k-e '

-some-iterative-noun-verbs-ending -prolative-archives

"Where there, there he will cross again."

This example shows some prefixes that can be attached to the root of a verb, but certain affixes are forbidden to live together. For example, AORIST and future tense affix will not be found in well-formed sentences.

14) vsenatara '"You will visit"

v-se-natahr-a '

future tense nominative pronoun verb root ASP akhiran instan

15) asenatara '"You must make a visit"

a-se-natahr-a '

conditional mood prefix nominative pronoun verb root sufiks momentary

16) sanatahrune '"You visited"

Sa-natahr-in-HNE '

Accusative Noun verb root suffix suffix while the stand

Here, different prefixes and suffixes are used which mark tense, aspect and modalities.

Most grammatical relations in Mohawk are expressed through different affixes to the verb. Subjects, objects, and relationships between subjects and objects are given their own affixes. In Mohawk, any transitive relationship between subject and object is prefixed. As an example:

17) a: ku-noruhkwa

I-you love

"I love you"

b: ri-noruhkwa

I-him love

"I love her"

c: ke-noruhkwa

I-it/her love

"I like her"

Each of these affixes shows a transitive relationship between two things. There are more affixes to show transitive relationships such as "we-them", they-we (inclusive/exclusive), etc.

Merge of nouns

One feature of Mohawk called noun incorporation allows a verb to absorb a noun into it. When a merge occurs, an epenthetic a can appear between the root noun and the root verb. As an example:

18) Owira'a wahrake 'ne o'wahru

The baby eats the meat

By combining nouns:

19) Owira'a wah a 'wahrake'

Baby eating meat

20) Wa'eksohare '"He washed the dishes" ks = plate, ohare = wash

21) Wa'kenakt a hninu '"I sleep-bought" nakt = sleep a (increase) hninu = buy

22) Wahana'tar a kwetare '"He cut the bread" Na'tar = bread a (increase) kwetar = cut

Most of these examples take epenthetic vocals a ; it can be omitted if the inserted noun causes no complex consonant cluster in the middle of the word.

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Orthography

The Mohawk alphabet consists of these letters: a e h i k n o t t w y along with ' and : . Orthography standardized in 1993. This standard allows for several variations of how languages ​​are represented, and groups /ts (i)/, /tj/, and /ky/ are written as spoken in each community. Orthography fits the phonological analysis as above except:

• Glotted shut /?/ is written with quotes ', often omitted at the end of the word, especially in the usually unspecified Eastern dialect.
• /d?/
  • /d?/ written ts in Eastern dialect (reflecting pronunciation). Seven is tsÃÆ'¡: ta [dza: da] .
  • /d?/ written tsi in the Central dialect. Seven is tsiÃÆ'¡: ta [d? a: da] .
  • /d?/ written tsy in Western dialect. Seven is tsyÃÆ'¡: ta [d? a: da] .
• /j/
  • /j/ is usually written i in Middle and East dialect. Six is iÃÆ': ia'k [jÃÆ': ja? k] .
  • /j/ is usually written y in Western dialect. Six is y: ya'k [jÃÆ': ja? k] .
• Vocal /??/ written en , as in one ÃÆ' Â © nska [?? ska] .
• Vocal /?/ written on , as in eight sha'tÃÆ' Â ©: kon [sha? d ?: ??] .
• In the case where the vowel/e/or/o/followed by/n/in the same syllable, the sign/n/is written with a low-macron accent: to? hÃÆ'³: ton (I closed the door). If ? has no accents, sequence? En? will be pronounced [??] .

Low-macron accents are not part of standard orthography and are not used by Central or Eastern dialects. In standard orthography,/h/written before/n/to create [en] or [on]: kehnhÃÆ'³: ton 'I close it'.

Stress, length, and tone

Stress, vocal length and tone are linked together in Mohawk. There are three types of vowels that are pressed: short tones, long tones, and old tones. Stress is always written and occurs only once per word.

• A high-pitched tone usually (but not always) appears in a closed syllable or before/h/. This is written with an acute accent: fruit kÃÆ'¡hi , the path ohÃÆ'¡ha .
• A high-pitched tone usually appears in an open syllable. It is written with a combination of acute and colonic accents: city kanÃÆ'¡: ta , man rÃÆ'³n: kwe . Note that when it is one long nose vowel, the colon will appear after n .
• A long tone is a result of a stress word that falls on a vowel that appears before /?/ or /h/ consonant (probably, of course, exceptions to this and other rules). Underlying /?/ or /h/ reappear when stress is placed elsewhere. It is written with accents and colon: stomach onekwÃÆ'¨n: ta (from /onekw? ta/).

Studying Mohawk

Six Nations Polytechnic in Ohsweken, Ontario, offers the Language Diploma and Ogwehoweh Degree Program in Mohawk or Cayuga.

Beginning in September 2017, the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario will offer a course of credit in Mohawk; classes will be provided at Renison University College in collaboration with the Waterloo Aboriginal Education Center, St. University University Paul.

Resources are available for self-taught Mohawk by people who do not have or limited access to native Mohawk speakers. The following is a collection of some of the currently available sources:

• Talk Mohawk , iPhone apps and Android apps, including the words, phrases, and Thanksgiving Addresses of Monica Peters
• Rosetta Stone level 1 and 2 (CD-ROM) edited by Frank and Carolee Jacobs and produced by Kanien'kehÃÆ'¡: ka OnkwawÃÆ' Â © n: na RaotitiÃÆ'³hkwa Language and Culture Center in KahnawÃÆ': Go to (high school level)
• A collection of 33 vocabulary lessons provided by the Mohawk Language Custodian Association. Collection of Lessons at KanehsatakeVoices.com
• David Kanatawakhon Maracle, Kanyen'keha Tewatati (Let's Talk Mohawk) , ISBN 0-88432-723-X (books and 3 companion cassettes available from the Audio Forum) (school/college level)
• Nancy Bonvillain, A Grammar of Akwesasne Mohawk (professional level)
• Nancy Bonvillain and Beatrice Francis, Mohawk-English, English-Mohawk Dictionary , 1971, University of New York State in Albany (glossary, by category)
• Chris W. Harvey, SathahitÃÆ'¡hkhe 'Kanien'kÃÆ' Â © ha (Mohawk Language Text Text Book, Eastern Dialect) , ISBN: 0-9683814-2-1 (school/college)
• Josephine S. Horne, Kanien'kÃÆ'  © ha IakorihonniÃÆ' nà © n: nis (book and 5 companion CDs available from KahnawÃÆ': to Cultural Center) (high school/high school level)
• Nora Deering & amp; Helga Harries Delisle, Mohawk: A Teaching Grammar (6 books and 6 companion tapes available from KahnawÃÆ': to Cultural Center) (school/college level)
• On October 8, 2013, "Daryl Kramp, Member of Parliament (Prince Edward-Hastings), on behalf of His Excellency Shelly Glover, Canada's Minister of Heritage and Official Language, today announced support for Tion Kionhnheht Ne Onkwawenna (TKNOLC) Tsi Language Circle developing Mohawk language learning tools. "
• Tom Porter and Dorothy Lazore, Nothing Can Do It Better Than Wariso: se: Language Guide and Dictionary
• FirstVoices, a free online learning tool, including video, text entry, images, games, iPhone apps and Android apps to facilitate language learning, teaching and revitalization.
• Talk to Mohawk , an app that can be downloaded from iTunes or Google Play, language facilitation by teaching words and phrases

Keyboard

There are software packages available for Microsoft Windows and Mac operating systems to activate typing Mohawk languages ​​electronically. Both packages are available through FirstVoices, a web-based project to support teaching and archiving of Aboriginal languages ​​and cultures.

See also

• the Mohawk people
• Iroquoian language
• Seneca language
• Language of Oneida

References

Further reading

• Hoover, M. L. (1992). "Mohawk's awakening in Kahnawake." Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 12 (2), 269-287.
• McAlpine, L., Eriks-Brophy, A., & amp; Crago, M. (1996). Teaching Confidence in the Mohawk Classroom: Language and Culture Issues. Anthropology & amp; Quarterly Education, (3). 390.
• Julian, C. (2011). History of Iroquoian (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Manitoba, Winnipeg.
• Maracle, B. J. (2002). Adult Mohawk immersion program. McGill Journal of Education, 37 (3), 387.
• Deering, N., & amp; Harries-Delisle, H. (1976). Mohawk. A Teaching Grammar. Early Version.
• Michelson, G. (1973). A thousand words from Mohawk (No. 5). National Museum of Man.

External links

• Mohawk Language API for software developers, websites, mobile apps, video games (ar, vr, and mixed reality).
• Mohawk Language Profile, Endangered Languages ​​Project
• kanienkeha.net, "Mohawk Dictionary" Endangered Language Initiative.
• Kanehsatake Voices, online lessons, Bilingual Mohawk courses in English and French
• TalkMohawk.com, the Mohawk-enabled mobile app
• Mohawk - English Dictionary, Webster's Online Dictionary
• Mohawk language, alphabet and pronunciation, Omniglot
• Marianne Mithun, "Mohawk grammar sketch", Conseil SupÃÆ'Â © rieur de la Langue FranÃÆ'§aise, Quebec (in French)
• [Mohawk language resource list]
• Mohawk Language Text, from Boston AthenÃÆ'Â|um: School Book Collection in Native American. Digital Collection.

Source of the article : Wikipedia