An Iroquoian language of upstate New York and southern Canada — the easternmost language of the Iroquois Confederacy, now undergoing significant revival.
Where it’s spoken
Mohawk (Kanien’kéha — “language of the flint people”) is spoken by the Mohawk Nation in upstate New York, southern Quebec (Kahnawake, Kanesatake), and southern Ontario (Six Nations of the Grand River, Tyendinaga, Akwesasne). Roughly 3,500 speakers. Immersion programmes at Kahnawake have produced a small but growing community of new first-language speakers.
What it sounds like
A polysynthetic Iroquoian language with no labial consonants in its native vocabulary (no /m/, /b/, /p/) and an elaborate pronominal prefix system that combines subject and object into a single morpheme on the verb.
How it’s written
The Latin alphabet using a standardised orthography developed by the Mohawk Language Standardisation Project in the 1990s. The Iroquois writing system uses an apostrophe for glottal stop and a colon for long vowels.
Find more languages by letter
Mohawk starts with M and ends with K. Browse other languages along the same letter.
Languages that contain a letter from "Mohawk":