Мохок тілі: Флинт орнының халқының мұрасы

Iroquoian language spoken by Mohawks in the United States and Canada

Mohawk ('/m//oʊ//h//ɔː//k/; Kanienʼkéha, "[language] of the Flint Place") is an Iroquoian language currently spoken by around 3,500 people of the Mohawk nation, located primarily in current or former Haudenosaunee territories, predominately Canada (southern Ontario and Quebec), and to a lesser extent in the United States (western and northern New York). The word "Mohawk" is an exonym. In the Mohawk language, the people say that they are from Kanien:ke ('Mohawk Country' or "Flint Stone Place") and that they are Kanienʼkehá꞉ka "People of the Flint Stone Place" or "People of the Flint Nation". 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 of Muh 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 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.

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.

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 (pre K to grade 8) in Kanienʼkéha to revive the language. With their children learning it, parents and other family members are taking language classes, too. 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 (Gah nah jo ha lay gay), meaning "Place of the clean pot", is a small Mohawk community on the north bank of the Mohawk River, west of Fonda, 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 the Kaienerekowa (Great Law of Peace). [5] Kanatsiohareke, Inc. is a non profit organization under IRS code 501c3. 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.

In 2011, there were approximately 3,500 speakers of Mohawk, primarily in Quebec, Ontario and western New York. Immersion (monolingual) 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. 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, 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.

The phoneme inventory of Mohawk is as follows (using the International Phonetic Alphabet).

Mohawk words have both stress and tone, and it can be classified as a restricted tone system (aka pitch accent system). Stressed vowels carry one of four tonal configurations, two of which are contour tones: high, low, rising and falling tones. Contour tones only occur in syllables with long vowels. Stress, vowel length and tone are connected in Mohawk phonology. High tone usually appears in closed syllables containing a short vowel, or before It is written with an acute accent: káhi , oháha Rising tone generally occurs in open syllables. It is written with a combination acute accent and colon: kaná꞉ta , rón꞉kwe Notice that when it is one of the nasal vowels which is long, the colon appears after the Long falling tone is the result of the word stress falling on a vowel which comes before a or + a consonant (there may be, of course, exceptions to this and other rules). The underlying or reappears when stress is placed elsewhere. It is written with a grave accent and colon: onekwèn꞉ta
In the standard spelling, a colon is placed after a vowel to lengthen it. There are 4 tones: mid, high, mid low falling and mid high rising, the latter two appear on long vowels (marked as V:).

Mohawk orthography uses the following letters: along with and The orthography was standardized in 1993. The standard allows for some variation of how the language is represented, and the clusters , , and are written as pronounced in each community. The orthography matches the phonological analysis as above except:
The glottal stop is written with an apostrophe , but is often omitted at the end of words, especially in Eastern dialect where it is typically not pronounced. Written in the Eastern dialect (reflecting pronunciation), as in tsá꞉ta "seven". Written in the Central dialect, as in tsiá꞉ta "seven". Written in the Western dialect, as in tsyá꞉ta "seven". Typically written with in the Central and Eastern dialects, as in ià꞉iaʼk [ˈjâːjaʔk] "six". Typically written with a in the Western dialect, as in yà꞉yaʼk "six". The nasalized vowel is written as , as in énska "one". The nasalized vowel is written , as in shaʼté꞉kon "eight". In cases where the vowel or is followed by an in the same syllable, the is written with an under macron diacritic: keṉhó꞉tons "I am closing a door". If the did not have the diacritic, the sequence would be pronounced Another convention is to write the nasal vowel with an ogonek, e. g. The low macron accent is not a part of standard orthography and is not used in the Central or Eastern dialects. In standard orthography, is written before to create the or : kehnhó꞉tons 'I am closing it'.