Home > Mohawk language
Mohawk is a Native American language spoken in the United States and Canada. It is part of the Iroquoian family.1 Phonology
Based on sound files available at http://www.ohwejagehka.com/lang.htm, the phoneme inventory appears to be as follows (using SAMPA notation):
1.1 Consonants
- There are no bilabials (unless one counts /w/ as labial rather than velar).
- It's unclear if aspiration is phonemic or a realization of C + /h/; probably the latter as ‘nh’ is /n/ + /h/, and ‘sh’ is /s/ + /h/ (not SAMPA /S/).
- From listening to the syllabification of careful speech, I also assume that orthographic 'ts' is indeed an affricate, since 'tsh' corresponds to SAMPA /tS/ - though it raises the question of why not use a single symbol for each of these? (After all, with such a small inventory, there are lots of Latin letters available!)
| |
Dental |
Palatal |
Velar |
Glottal |
| Stop |
t |
|
k |
? |
| Affricate |
ts |
tS |
|
|
| Fricative |
s |
|
|
h |
| Nasal |
n |
|
|
|
| Liquids |
l |
|
w |
|
1.2 Vowels
- Length is contrastive.
- Nasalization is contrastive.
- There appear to be a high and low tone. (See tonal language.)
| |
Front |
Central |
Back |
| High |
i |
|
|
| Mid |
|
E |
o |
| Low |
|
|
a |
2 External links
Languages of Canada
Language
Native American languages
Polysynthetic languages
