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
- 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 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
- 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 |