Mohawk language
Mohawk or Kanienʼkéha is an Iroquoian language currently spoken by around 3,500 people of the Mohawk nation, located primarily in current or former Haudenosaunee territories, predominantly in Canada, and to a lesser extent in the United States. The word "Mohawk" is an exonym. In the Mohawk language, the people say that they are from Kanien:ke and that they are Kanienʼkehá꞉ka.
The Mohawks were extremely wealthy traders, as other nations in their confederacy needed their flint for tool-making. Their Algonquian-speaking neighbors, the People of Muh-heck Heek Ing, 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 as Mohawks. The Dutch also referred to the Mohawk as Egils or Maquas. The French adapted those terms as Aigniers or Maquis, or called them by the generic Iroquois.
History
The Mohawks were the largest and most powerful of the original Five Nations, controlling a vast area of land on the eastern frontier of the Iroquois Confederacy. The North Country and Adirondack region of present-day Upstate New York would have constituted the greater part of the Mohawk-speaking area lasting until the end of the 18th century.Current status
The Mohawk language is currently classified as threatened, and the number of native speakers has continually declined over the past several years.Mohawk has the largest number of speakers among the Northern Iroquoian languages, and today it is the only one with more than a thousand remaining speakers. At Akwesasne, residents have founded a language immersion school in Kanienʼkéha to revive the language. With their children learning it, parents and other family members are taking language classes, too.
The radio station CKON-FM, licensed by the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation, broadcasts portions of its programming in Kanienʼkéha. The call sign is a reference to the Mohawk word "sekon", which means "hello".
A Mohawk language immersion school was established. 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 Mohawk Thanksgiving 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.
An adult immersion program was also created in 1985 to address the issue of intergenerational fluency decline of the Mohawk language.
Kanatsiohareke, is a small Mohawk community on the north bank of the Mohawk River, west of Fonda, New York.Kanatsiohareke#cite note-1| Kanatsiohareke was created to be a "Carlisle Indian Boarding School in Reverse", teaching Mohawk language and culture.Kanatsiohareke| Located at the ancient homeland of the Kanienkehaka, it was re-established in September 1993 under the leadership of Thomas R. Porter.Kanatsiohareke#cite note-3| The community must raise their own revenue and frequently hold cultural presentations, workshops, and academic events, including an annual Strawberry Festival.Kanatsiohareke#cite note-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 the Kaienerekowa.Kanatsiohareke#cite note-5| Kanatsiohareke, Inc. is a non-profit organization under IRS code 501.
In 2006, over 600 people were reported to speak the language in Canada, many of them elderly.
Kahnawake is located at a metropolitan location, near central Montreal, 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.
Current number of speakers
In 2011, there were approximately 3,500 speakers of Mohawk, primarily in Quebec, Ontario and western New York. Immersion classes for young children at Akwesasne and other reserves are helping to train new first-language speakers. The importance of immersion classes among parents grew after the passage of Bill 101, and in 1979 the Mohawk Survival School was established to facilitate language training at the high school level. Kahnawake and Kanatsiohareke offer immersion classes for adults. In the 2016 Canadian census, 875 people said Mohawk was their only mother tongue.Usage in popular culture
Mohawk dialogue features prominently in Ubisoft Montreal's 2012 action-adventure open world video game Assassin's Creed III, through the game's main character, the half-Mohawk, half-Welsh Ratonhnhaké꞉ton, also called Connor, and members of his native Kanièn꞉ke village around the times of the American Revolution. Ratonhnhaké꞉ton was voiced and modelled by Crow actor Noah Bulaagawish Watts. Hiawatha, the leader of the Iroquoian civilization in Sid 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 in Tyendinaga, a Mohawk community roughly 200 kilometres east of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The film was set to be shown at the 4th annual Ethnografilm festival in Paris, France.
The Mohawk language is used in the 2017 film Mohawk, the 1991 film Black Robe, the 1990 film The Company of Strangers, and the 2020 television series Barkskins.
The language was used throughout in the Marvel Studios animated series What If...?, in the season 2 episode "What If... Kahhori Reshaped the World?", where they introduce an original Mohawk superhero named Kahhori.
Dialects
Mohawk has three major dialects: Western, Central, and Eastern ; the differences between them are largely phonological. These are related to the major Mohawk territories since the eighteenth century. The pronunciation of and several consonant clusters may differ in the dialects.| Phonology | Western | Central | Eastern | |
| seven | ||||
| nine | ||||
| I fall | ||||
| dog |
Phonology
The phoneme inventory of Mohawk is as follows.Consonants
A typologically uncommon feature of Mohawk phonology is that there are no labials, except in a few adoptions from French and English, where and appear ; these sounds are late additions to Mohawk phonology and were introduced after widespread European contact.| Dental | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
| Nasal | ||||
| Plosive | ||||
| Affricate | ||||
| Fricative | ||||
| Approximant | / |
Consonant clusters
The Central 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⟩ in thing and she.