Learn Mohawk - PART 1
Learn Mohawk and the Mohawk writing system
Objectives: Learn about the Mohawk language and the writing system. Give students the opportunity to compare a Mohawk texts with their translation, and analyze a Mohawk prayer and the values conveyed by it. In the second part of the lesson, students will carry on to compose A short poem in groups using the Mohawk vocabulary list and present it to the class.
Materials:
Learn Mohawk and the Mohawk writing system
Objectives: Learn about the Mohawk language and the writing system. Give students the opportunity to compare a Mohawk texts with their translation, and analyze a Mohawk prayer and the values conveyed by it. In the second part of the lesson, students will carry on to compose A short poem in groups using the Mohawk vocabulary list and present it to the class.
Materials:
- Mohawk language background
- Cree texts and translation
- Cree prayer and translation
Mohawk alphabet (Iewennonnià:tha)
Notes
Sample texts in MohawkText 1
Teiohonwa:ka ne'ni akhonwe:ia Kon'tatieshon iohnekotatie Wakkawehatie wakkawehatie. Translation The canoe is very fast. It is mine. All day long I splash away. I paddle along, I paddle along. Text 2 Okariata:ne tahotharatie Tahsakohroria:ne ne tsi niho:ten Ne se aonha:a thorihwaka:ion Ne se aonha:a thorihwaka:ion Translation The mosquito is bringing a message He's coming to tell us how poor he is. The truth of the matter is, that He is so old fashioned and brings the same old message. Source: http://www.kahonwes.com/language/mohawk_stuff.html |
Mohawk (Kanien'keha) Mohawk is an Iroquoian language with about 3,350 speakers, most of whom are elderly, though there are younger speakers in some areas. There are six Mohawk-speaking communities: Tyendinaga, Wáhta, and Ohswé:ken in Ontario; Kahnawà:keand Kanehsatà:ke in Quebec, and Ahkwesáhsne in Quebec, Ontario and New York State. The native name for the Mohawk language, Kanien'keha, means 'people of the flint'. The term Mohawk comes from a name meaing 'man-eaters' used by their Algonquian enemies. Mohawk was first written by French missionaries in the early 18th. They devised a spelling system based on French pronunciation and used it to produce Mohawk translations of various religious and legal documents. Mohawk has been taught in schools since 1970, and in 1972, a group of educators, translators and Elders developed an orthography for the language. Several other spelling systems have been used for Mohawk. A standard form of written Mohawk was agreed on at the Mohawk Language Standardisation Conference, held in August 1993 at Tyendinaga. Source: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/mohawk.htm A Mohawk prayerTranslation
Great thanks now, therefore, that you have safely arrived. Now, then, let us smoke the pipe together. Because all around are hostile agencies which are each thinking, "I will frustrate their purpose. Here thorny ways, and here falling trees, and here wild beasts lying in ambush. Either by these you might have perished, my offspring, or, here by floods you might have been destroyed, my offspring, or by the uplifted hatchet in the dark outside the house. Every day these are wasting us; or deadly invisible disease might have destroyed you, my offspring. Source: http://www.worldlanguage.com/Languages/Mohawk.htm |