Mohawk is a Native American language spoken in the United States and Canada. It is part of the Iroquoian family.
Phonology
Based on sound files available at http://www.ohwejagehka.com/lang.htm, the phoneme inventory appears to be as follows (using IPA notation):
Consonants
- There are no bilabials (unless one counts /w/ as labial rather than velar).
- It is unclear whether aspiration is phonemic or a realization of C + /h/; probably the latter as ‘nh’ is /n/ + /h/, and ‘sh’ is /s/ + /h/ (not IPA ).
- Listening to the syllabification of careful speech suggests that orthographic "ts" is indeed an affricate, since "tsh" corresponds to IPA — though it raises 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!)
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| Dental
| Palatal
| Velar
| Glottal
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| Stop
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| Affricate
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| Fricative
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| Nasal
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| Liquids
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Vowels
- Length is contrastive.
- Nasalization is contrastive.
- There appear to be a high and low tone. (See tonal language.)
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| Front
| Central
| Back
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| High
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| Mid
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| Low
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| a
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External links
