Mohawk language (original) (raw)

Mohawk is a Native American language spoken in the United States. It is part of the Iroquoian family spoken in the Western U.S.

Phonology

Based on sound files available at http://www.ohwejagehka.com/lang.htm, the phoneme inventory appears to be as follows (using SAMPA notation):

Consontants

1. There are no bilabials (unless one counts /w/ as labial rather than velar).
2. 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/).
3. 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 begs 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 | |

Vowels

1. Length is contrastive.

2. Nasalization is contrastive.

3. There appear to be a high and low tone. (See tonal language.)

   | | Front | Central | Back | |

| -------- | ------- | ---- | - | | High | i | | | | Mid | | E | o | | Low | | | a |