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Onondaga ( or , "People of the Hills") is the language of the Onondaga First Nation, one of the original five constituent tribes of the League of the Iroquois (Hodenosaunee).
This language is spoken in the United States and Canada, primarily on reservations in western New York state, and near Brantford, Ontario.
Phonology
There are three stops, , , and the glottal stop (before vowels and approximants, and are allophonically voiced to and , and are frequently spelled
Onondaga has five oral vowels, ( is normally represented with <ä>), and two nasal vowels, and . The nasal vowels, following the Iroquoianist tradition, are spelled with ogoneks in Ontario (<ę> and ). In New York, they are represented with a following <ñ> (
Grammar
Like all Iroquoian languages, Onondaga is a polysynthetic language, meaning that many grammatical and lexical concepts are expressed as modifiers rather than separate words. This means that many concepts which could take many words to express in English can be express in a single word in Onondaga. For example:
- FACT-DUALIC-1.SG.NOM-3.NONMASC.ACC-bed-EPEN-raise-BEN-PUNC
- "I raised the bed for her/them." (ex, a Murphy bed)
The abbreviations used above are as follows:
- FACT = Factive, something known to have occurred
- DUALIC = (A range of different meanings)
- 1.SG.NOM = I - refers to the subject
- 3.NOMMASC.ACC = Her/them - refers to the object, 3rd person, non-masculine
- EPEN = An epenthetic vowel, inserted to break up illegal consonant clusters
- BEN = Benefactive, indicates that event was done for someone's benefit
- PUNC = Punctual, refers to an event that is over and done with
See also
External links
Languages of Canada | Iroquoian languages | Languages of the United States | Indigenous languages of the North American eastern woodlands
"Onondaga language"